


Reason Enough -or- Requiem for a Mimeograph Machine

by Taylor Dancinghands (tdancinghands)



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Backstory: Radek Zelenka, Episode Related, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-03
Updated: 2012-05-03
Packaged: 2017-11-04 18:47:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 25,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/397042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tdancinghands/pseuds/Taylor%20Dancinghands
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In "Last Man" we learn of a sad, alternate future for McKay and Atlantis but only up until the point where he talks to Lorne. What happened when he got to Atlantis to install his hologram program?... and after that?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Staring Into The Depths Of The Darkest Dream, Hurling Your Stones In The Eye Of The War Machine

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers/Season: "Last Man", and everything up to that point in season 4, especially "Travelers" and "Be All My Sins Remembered".

**Chapter 1**

 ****

** Staring Into The Depths Of The Darkest Dream, **

** Hurling Your Stones In The Eye Of The War Machine **

****

 ** _Předtím_** (Before) 

"Did I never tell you about my father's printing press?" Radek asked as he idly watched the simulation slowly progress on the screen before him.

"Um, no?" Rodney replied, pushing his glasses up onto his nose as he peered at his own notebook screen.

"You asked me earlier," Radek said, looking across at his colleague, still not used to seeing glasses on him, much less the iron gray hair, or the deep set wrinkles around his eyes, "when I had learned to be so... devious? I think that is the word you used."

"Only in the kindest sense," Rodney looked up as well and, Radek noted, not for the first time, how uncertain and nervous Rodney seemed now, all the time. That was something else that was wrong with this timeline, he mused, and wondered if their actions would have fixed that as well, though they would never know.

"Of course," he reassured. "In circumstances such as those in which we find ourselves now, deviousness is a virtue, as it was when I was young."

"I suppose so," Rodney agreed, a little sadly.

"It was my father's youngest brother, Zdednek, who acquired the thing, and at first no one wanted anything to do with it," Radek began his tale. "He stole it from where he worked, at a scrap metal yard and, of course, it was broken when he found it, as someone had decided that it wasn't possible to be repaired and so took it to be scrapped. He put it in the trunk of a car he had borrowed his flatmate and drove from Brno to my grandfather's house, where we all lived then -before it burned down- to show to my father and convince him to fix it." Radek shook his head, remembering the old family story of events that had happened before he had been born.

"I am told that my mother nearly forbade him from entering the house ever again, she was so angry, but my grandmother said, family is family, and he will not take it out of the car while he is visiting. That was what they did, of course, because we always did whatever Babičká said, and then after dinner he and my father drove to the school where my father was the školník -the man who fixes things and takes care of maintenance at the school- and left it there, in the school's coal cellar."

"So I take it he did fix it?" Rodney asked.

"Oh yes," Radek said with a fond sigh. "All my uncle Zdenek had to say to my father was, 'maminka says you can fix anything, Kuba,' and he had to try. And once he tried he did, because maminka was usually right about that kind of thing. Of course, the thing was always breaking down when we were using it, and eventually I learned to fix it as well. It was the first thing I took apart and put back together again that mattered... and it mattered a great deal."

"Okay," Rodney said, eyes back on his notebook, but Radek knew he was still listening.

"It was a dangerous thing to posses, and my mother and my aunts all dreaded the times when my father and uncles were out at the school, late at night, using it," he continued, "but they were, I think, a little proud as well, to show such secret defiance."

"Wait," Rodney was looking up again. "Why was it dangerous?"

"Any means to speak freely, without the sanction of authority, was dangerous where I grew up, Rodney," Radek reminded him. Rodney was neither stupid nor ignorant, Radek had to remind himself, just a little distracted. He and Rodney had taken an entirely different set of truths for granted in their youths, and sometimes Rodney forgot.

"Oh... right..." Rodney muttered, coloring slightly. "Sorry."

"Sometimes I forget those things myself," Radek offered with forgiveness. "And sometimes I would like to."

~*~

_**Hark, Hark, The Dogs Do Bark, the Beggars Are Coming To Town**_

The Atlantis gateroom, when Rodney McKay finally arrived there after his first wormhole trip in twenty five years, seemed at once both heart-breakingly familiar, and heart-breakingly different. Physically, little or nothing had changed. Twenty five years was, after all, a mere blink of an eye in the lifetime of a city that had existed for tens of thousands of years. It was the mood of the place that had changed -a thing that Rodney would once have dismissed as immaterial, or just nonsense. There was no dismissing it now, however. Having set foot in his former home for no more than a few seconds, Rodney could already sense the wretchedly oppressive mood that permeated the place. This seemed so very wrong, and yet, just as he would have expected. Everything else wonderful in his life had turned to ashes. How not this as well?

The new Director, Dr Bryant, was waiting to greet him. She was a civilian, yes, and a woman, if that made any difference, but she was as different from Dr Elizabeth Weir as could possibly be imagined. Cut from the same bolt of cloth as Maggie Thatcher, Rodney thought, or Madeline Albright , but without, he suspected, the same moral fortitude. A small mind looked at him suspiciously from her narrow, steel gray eyes as they shook hands, assessing rather than welcoming. Elizabeth would have found a way to do both, Rodney reflected.

Rodney was no expert on American military services, but it was neither Air-force airmen, nor Marines that flanked Dr Bryant and served as his welcoming committee. They seemed to be... was that a patch for Navy SEALs? Rodney frowned in confusion but knew better than to comment, and handed over his bags for the soldier to carry as he was escorted to his new quarters.

They put him in what they were calling VIP quarters, which were rather more spacious than the cramped dorm room he'd once called home here. Looking around the pleasantly appointed but utterly impersonal space, Rodney found himself irrationally wishing for that old place instead -tiny, cluttered, but marked with the few terribly important things that had made it his. The pictures and diplomas he'd mounted on the wall there, and later in the office of the fine home he'd shared for that one dream-like year with Jennifer, all lay in a box in some storage locker in Colorado now. He remembered how important they had seemed to him then, and how unimportant they had come to be, in the end.

Rodney was not here, however, to reclaim his lost youth, or even to make a new home. He was here to do a job, and when he was done... well he wasn't sure about that. Best to focus on the present moment, and let the future attend to itself.

He didn't bother to really unpack, just laid his suitcase open on top of the dresser and extracted his laptop, then found a desk to set it on and power it up, linking into the local network first thing. He was pretty sure he remembered the way to the labs, but a lot could change in twenty five years, and he most certainly did not wish to get caught wandering the corridors lost. Pulling up a map of the city, however, Rodney soon saw that all the important things, the labs, the mess hall, the infirmary, were all right where he had left them. He glanced over his old accustomed routes next, checking to make sure that the transporters he'd always used were still up and running, and found it all to be unchanged.

Shutting down his laptop, Rodney did one last check before he left his quarters -a quick self assessment to be sure he had eaten recently enough. Rodney didn't really want to confront the mess hall alone first thing, but he would if he had to. Passing out in the corridors due to low blood sugar would be infinitely worse. He'd eaten a big lunch before leaving Earth, though, and figured it would be a few hours yet before he needed to deal with that. Having determined this, Rodney tucked his laptop under his arm and headed out to find the labs.

Like riding a bicycle, Rodney thought, as his feet lead him directly to the labs without a single misstep. The faces he passed along the way were not the familiar ones he recalled, and that same sense of oppression and joylessness he'd sensed in the gateroom hung over everything, but the city herself remained unchanged, and for that Rodney was properly grateful. At the door to the labs, however, he hesitated.

This had once been his domain, his realm, where he had ruled at the very pinnacle of his career. He no longer knew who worked here; the SGC hadn't even seen fit to keep him apprised as to who was running the place these days, but there was a better than even chance that he'd be recognized. There was also a good chance that among those who recognized him, he would not be remembered fondly. Rodney was realistic about such things. He'd told himself that he was ready to be mocked and humiliated, if that was the price of carrying out his plan, and he'd certainly endured enough of that recently to be used to it. It was going to be particularly hard, though, he realized, to endure such treatment here, where he had once commanded such power. Still, there was nothing for it but to stride in and get it over with. He had come to do a job, and nothing that lay through those doors had the power to stop him.

It was as he was steeling himself to take the plunge that a commotion erupted from within, and the door opened before him. An angry staccato of a language he did not speak but recognized quite well indeed burst out, and preceding it, a young woman in a lab coat, her face flushed and her eyes bright... with tears? She stormed past him, heedless of his presence so that he had to step back in order to avoid being run over, and Rodney blinked in astonishment. Was it possible...?

"And do not come back," a painfully familiar, accented voice called after her, "until you can actually show me your diploma, so that I may creditably write to MIT asking how they have allowed such incompetents to graduate!"

Rodney slipped in unseen in the wake of the commotion, finding, as might be expected, every other scientist in the lab deeply intent upon their own work. Looking around, Rodney saw that the faces, save one, were as unfamiliar as those in the halls, but here the air of oppression was considerably lessened, and the immediate oppressor, such as he was, perched before him, just as intent upon his work as everyone else.

Dr Radek Zelenka's hair was longer now, and streaked with silver and gray, and his glasses were noticeably thicker. The eyes behind the lenses, however, were still bright with intelligence and curiosity, and just at the moment they smoldered a bit with annoyance. It was all so very wonderful to see that Rodney found an unexpected smile breaking out on his face.

"Still using my methods to keep the minions in line, eh?" he said, and Zelenka's head snapped up from behind his laptop, his expression gradually shifting from one of shock to sincere delight.

"Rodney McKay!" he said, grinning. "They told me you were coming, but you know, I did not believe them."

"Radek... Zelumpka...?" Rodney could not help returning to the old joke. "I had no idea you were still here!"

Zelenka's grin grew fierce, but the question he asked next was an honest one, as honest as the latter part of Rodney's last statement. "Then they did not tell you?" he asked.

Rodney shook his head. "Bastards revoked nearly all my security clearances," he answered.

"Well then you will not have learned," Zelenka said merrily, "that I had my name changed to Dr Fumbles McStupid some time ago... for simplicity's sake."

Rodney could not have stopped the laughter that welled up from within him if he tried, and so he gave in to it, letting it render him weak in the knees, so that he had to quickly find a stool to sit on, and even squeeze a few tears from his eyes. He did not think he had laughed so hard in years... possibly twenty five of them.

Zelenka joined him, though the looks his staff gave each other as his peals of laughter filled the lab made Rodney wonder if he had not laughed in nearly as long as well.

~*~


	2. Lady Bug, Lady Bug – Fly away home...

**Předtím**

"The name for what we produced on that press was _samizdat,_ forbidden literature, news, announcements, anything that the authorities did not wish us to read," Radek explained as Rodney listened and worked silently. "People went to jail, or worse, for producing and distributing samizdat on a regular basis, but we were, for the most part, careful, and also we were lucky."

"You never got caught?" Rodney asked.

"Not my father, or me," Radek answered, "though my uncle Zdednek, who never married, and was always a bit of a trouble maker, was arrested three times, twice for distributing samizdat, and once for being at an illegal concert."

"An illegal concert?" Such things did sound absurd now, Radek reflected, even here, where now many of the rules had become nearly as absurd.

"All gatherings had to be approved by the government," Radek explained, "even when a band played in a pub. That was where my uncle was arrested the third time."

"No criticism of your fellow countrymen implied," Rodney said, "or of everyone else in the Soviet bloc, but how do people end up agreeing to let their own government do crap like that?" Rodney asked.

Radek shrugged. "In my country, we were war-weary and beaten, and betrayed by the west," he said. "And we did not read the fine print, when we chose our rulers after the war. But we still ask ourselves that question, Rodney, and I hope we never stop."

"So what kind of stuff did you print?" Rodney drew him back into the narrative, and Radek smiled with pride at the memory.

"Oh, there were so many wonderful things," he reminisced. "We printed over one hundred copies of the [original manifesto](http://libpro.cts.cuni.cz/charta/docs/declaration_of_charter_77.pdf) from Charta 77, as well as many of the statements from Výbor na obranu nespravedlivě stíhaných -the Committee for the Unjustly Persecuted. All very dangerous to print or just to posses. I think the longest thing we ever published was a dozen copies of Václav Havel's ["Power of the Powerless"](http://history.hanover.edu/courses/excerpts/165havel.html). That was a nightmare to collate, but such a glorious thing to read." Radek grinned at the memory of the power of those words that he had first read at the age of eleven, and had re-read countless times since.

"Mostly though, we printed small things," he continued. "Announcements for meetings and other gatherings, and clandestine concerts. We once printed an announcement of a concert by the [ Plastic People of the Universe](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastic_People_of_the_Universe)." This was one of the small runs that Radek had taken the most pride in, and he had kept a copy of one of those tiny, dangerous handbills for himself, long after the event. It resided now in a safe deposit box in Prague, where he would probably never return, and he wished he had it with him now.

"The what?" Rodney asked predictably. Radek laughed.

"They were a band," he explained. "Vaclav Havel wrote some of their lyrics, and all of their songs were very... rebellious. The members of the band were all arrested and put on trial in 1976, and it was this that inspired the beginning of the Charta 77. In a way, they were some of the greatest heroes of our revolution, long before it took place."

A contemplative silence followed this, as the two scientists concentrated for a moment on their work, but after a while Rodney broke the silence.

"Any one started any bands here?" he asked.

"No," answered Radek. "Not a one."

~*~

**_Lady Bug, Lady Bug – Fly Away Home,  
Your House Is On Fire – Your Children Are Gone _ **

Rodney had been worried that Zelenka would find his proposal to change the timeline as wrong headed as everyone else (except possibly for General Lorne) had, but his worries were dismissed almost immediately.

"I would be perfectly content if almost all of the last twenty five years had never happened," he said, with no small amount of bitterness. "I would especially like to have never become head of this wretched science division. If you believed you were saddled with incompetents and misfits before... "

"Why did you stay?" Rodney asked honestly, even though he was grateful beyond words to find Zelenka here now.

"To begin with," he said, "I suppose it was out of a sense of duty, to you, and to those we had lost. After that, it was just perverse stubbornness, I am afraid."

"Damn, Zelenka," Rodney shook his head. "You didn't owe me that. Not after I'd cut and run..."

They were alone, eating their dinner in a conference room near the labs, where they'd gone to look over the specifics of Rodney's proposal. He'd sent one of his minions, a pinched-faced and pale looking young man from the lab, to fetch them a meal and he'd delivered it silently a few minutes later and then fled.

Zelenka looked away, shrugging his shoulders. "I was not the only one," he said, and then Rodney noticed that the focus of Zelenka's gaze had gone to the plain gold band on the third finger of his left hand. "They probably didn't tell you that I got married either, did they?" he said.

Rodney's eyes widened. "No," he said with astonishment. "Who...?"

"Miko Kusanagi," Zelenka said with a wistful smile. "We both wished very much that you could have come to the wedding." Zelenka sighed and shook his head. "It didn't last though."

"Wait, what...?" Rodney sputtered. "Kusanagi? You married Miko Kusanagi? But why didn't it last?"

Zelenka shrugged again, this time with a chagrined frown. "After five years or so we realized that our loyalty to you was the only thing we had in common," he confessed. "We ended it amicably, and we are still good friends."

"Your what...?" Three bombshells in the space of thirty seconds was just a bit beyond Rodney's capacity to absorb, and the last one was a doozy. He was going to have to think long and hard about that one. "Your loyalty... to me? For gods sake, Zelenka, what were you thinking?"

"I knew I should never have told you that," Zelenka said, crossing his arms over his chest with a frown. "You will be insufferable for the rest of your stay now, I am sure."

"I'm still trying to wrap my head around it," Rodney said. "And Kusanagi; she's still here?"

"Oh yes," Zelenka said. "She is working up in the computer lab today, but I'm sure she will be overjoyed to see you." Something about the nature of Zelenka's grin as he said this made Rodney a little nervous, but then, Kusanagi's near hero worship of him had always made him a little nervous.

"She, ah... she will, will she?" Rodney said a little hesitantly.

"Of course!" Zelenka replied. "She will like your plan too, and you will want her to rework the code for your hologram program. We have made some advances here you will not have been aware of."

Rodney bit off a reflexive retort that his coding did not either need to be reworked, because Zelenka was almost certainly right about the advances they had made here. "So, um, who else is still here from the, ah... the old days?" Rodney asked. "Anyone?"

"Not so many," Zelenka answered, "but there are a few. Dr Parrish in botany... Dr Vogel was still doing good work in astrophysics until he died of a heart attack last year; Helen Biro is still head of pathology; oh, and Dr Esposito went back to Earth a few years after you did, got married and had a child, then left them all three years ago and came back here to work in stellar cartography." Zelenka grinned to see Rodney's surprise at this news. "And Chuck Fields is still our head gate tech, though Dr Bryant hates his guts and keeps trying to get him shipped back, he has far more seniority than she does, and a lot of friends at the SGC, so she has to put up with him."

Rodney grinned to hear this. "Man, what an old battle axe," he commented, reflecting on his brief encounter with Atlantis' current director. "Is she as big of a pain to work under as she looks?"

"Bigger," Zelenka said with a sour look. "Do not trifle with her McKay," he warned. "She ruins careers for pleasure, and she runs this city with an iron fist."

"Well, I pretty much ruined my career all by myself, thank you," Rodney commented, "and I'm just a visiting guest of the SGC, so I don't see what she could do to me." He shrugged.

"She can put a stop to your project, no matter what the SGC says," Zelenka replied seriously. "If you want this plan to be carried out, you will need to stay on her good side, or at the very least stay out of her way."

"She doesn't look as though she exactly has a good side," Rodney remarked with a frown.

"Not really, no," replied Zelenka. "But if you let it be known that your intentions are to complete your project and move along, then you should have no trouble staying out of her way at least."

"That is the plan," said Rodney.

"Good," said Zelenka. "So much the better."

 

***

Staying out of Dr Bryant's way turned out not to be too difficult, but that, in the end, was mainly because every piece of equipment, material or power allocation they needed came to be supplied either by Zelenka himself, or through one of his contacts. He seemed to have a lot of these, and an ornate system of favors, trades and IOUs seemed to be involved in a number of the transactions he undertook on behalf of Rodney's project.

It soon became clear to Rodney that without these transactions, he would have had to come to Dr Bryant for a great many things in order to complete his project and frankly, the whole thing would likely have been doomed. Instead, however, he and Zelenka made good progress and, Rodney had to grudgingly admit, added a great number of improvements which increased the likelihood of the thing's working by a considerable degree.

Miko Kusanagi came down to the lab Zelenka had set up for their little project on the morning of his second day there, and had, just as Zelenka had said she would, a number of improvements in mind for the holographic programing. She was, of course, just as respectful and deferential as always, as she humbly pointed out all the massive holes and flaws in Rodney's code, and Rodney found himself falling into the old role of confirming her assessment with his customary, rudely dismissive attitude.

He found he couldn't keep it up, though, and he called to her as she scurried toward the door to leave. She paused, looking back to blink owlishly through the absurdly large frames of her glasses, unchanged, he would swear, since he'd seen her last. Other things had changed, of course. Her hair had gone streaked with gray, and her face creased with lines around her eyes and mouth. It seemed very wrong for her to still be treating him as the 'great doctor', when he had accomplished virtually nothing over the last quarter century, but he didn't know how to say this, and couldn't bear to tell her to stop it.

"It's... it's really good to see you again," was what he eventually said. "And thank you for helping here. I really mean it."

"It is my pleasure, Dr McKay," she said, with a brief flash of heartfelt smile. "It always has been." He saw it then, the glint in her eyes that confessed the whole deference thing to be an act, and maybe it always had been. The pleasure, though, Rodney could see, that was sincere, and he grinned back at her, happy to share the joke at last. The moment of honesty lasted only a few seconds, though, and the mask of humility was firmly back in place when she whisked out the door.

She'd fashioned that mask to work with him, many years ago, Rodney realized, but it had other uses now, and so she'd kept it. Underneath that mask was a brilliant scientist with a playful streak Rodney had never imagined existed, and he turned his gaze back to Zelenka, wondering silently what hidden side of the secretive Asian scientist he had come to know in their brief marriage.

Zelenka frowned, knowing full well just what Rodney was wondering about. "Do not ever ask me about her, McKay," he said with a glower that did not hide the pleasant but personal memories he clearly cherished. "I will tell you nothing."

"You don't have to, my friend," Rodney leered knowingly, though, of course, he knew nothing. "You don't have to say a thing."

**

Together they chose a site near the end of the southwest pier in which to install their precious package. They made the whole thing self contained, powered with the latest version of a naquahdah generator, though they also hooked the holographic generator into the city's information systems, so that Rodney's hologram could be projected anywhere in the city, even if Atlantis' own power systems were completely dead, which they might well be in 48,000 years.

"Of course, if Atlantis picks up and relocates again any time in the future," Radek mused doubtfully as they sealed the hatch on the compartment for the last time, "then all bets are off."

"Oh, do not get me started on the things that could go wrong," Rodney said as they headed back to the city center. "First and foremost being that we have no guarantee that the city will even last that long."

"And we'll never know if it works, will we," Zelenka said as they stepped into the transporter.

"Not this version of us, no," said Rodney. "This reality was created once Sheppard was sent forward, and we're stuck with it. Somewhere, though, there may now be a version of us, all of us, where Sheppard got sent back and a lot of bad shit didn't happen. That reality couldn't exist without the work we just did though, and that's why it was worth doing."

"Oh, I agree it was worth doing," Zelenka commented following Rodney out of the transporter to find themselves just outside the mess hall. "Only... In TV shows and movies, this is where we flash over to the past to see how the changes have worked, yes? And I know it is foolish, but I do wish I could see just a little, to know that what we did worked."

"Yeah, me too," said Rodney with a wistful smile. "But even though we can't see it for ourselves, I'm pretty sure it will work, and if it does we can take satisfaction in knowing that we created a whole new reality." They walked together into the mess, and Rodney came to once again reflect on how different, subdued and sullen, the atmosphere was here than from the Atlantis of his memories.

"And it's bound to be better than this one," he said, looking around the room that ought to have been buzzing with lively chatter and discourse, but wasn't. "That's a fair accomplishment for a life's work, wouldn't you say?"

"Yes," said Zelenka, quietly and a little sadly, coming to stand behind him in the lunch line. "Yes, I would."

~*~


	3. The bough that breaks, the cradle falls...

**Předtím**

"What kind of printing press was it, anyway?" Rodney asked the next day.

Yesterday's simulations had been very promising, though not yet ready to be put into action, and so Rodney and Radek had spent much of the morning tweaking their code, with the hopes that the new simulations would, at last, give them the results they'd been looking for. Rodney had finished with his assigned lines a few moments ago and had stepped away from his computer to grab another cup of coffee and a powerbar, and naturally asked his question with his mouth full. Radek was still focusing on setting up the latest simulation, and between that and Rodney's food befuddled diction, he didn't understand the question at first.

"I beg your pardon?" he asked.

"The printing press you were telling me about yesterday," Rodney said, a trifle more clearly, now that he had chewed more of his food. "What kind was it? Some antique, movable type affair or what?"

"What?" Radek imagined for a moment the monumental task of setting the two hundred plus pages of Havel's essay in movable type and chuckled. "No, no, nothing so archaic. It was... we called it in Czech a cyklostyl... I think in English that is a... mimeograph machine? A stencil duplicator. Very solid, reliable and adaptable technology."

"What, like the things they used in schools before everybody had photocopiers?" Rodney asked. "Like we published our high school science fiction fanzine on?"

Radek grinned in amusement. "I did once read somewhere that there were some parallels between the publication techniques of samizdat and science fiction 'fanzines' in the west," he said. "And certainly, there was some science fiction that was published as samizdat on our side of the iron curtain."

"Well maybe some parallels," Rodney said, "but I don't think anyone in my high school science fiction club was ever going to be be arrested and thrown in jail for an indefinite period of time for printing our zine. Even though we did once steal three reams of paper from the Student Government offices to print issue number four."

"Probably not," Radek agreed. "But the mimeograph suited both our needs for the same reason. It was a relatively simple technology, inexpensive to operate, and the duplication masters were fairly easy to create."

"True," Rodney pointed out, "But you needed a typewriter to make them. And I don't suppose those were any easier to get hold of than a mimeograph machine where you were."

"No," Radek concurred. "Sometimes we got our copy masters from a third party, sometimes they were hand cut, and sometimes my mother, who was a school teacher, would use one of the school typewriters to type up the masters herself. There were three typewriters at our school and she always used a different one each time, so that the unique qualities of each machine might not cause the samizdat to be traced to her. We worried about this, but we were very fortunate and she was never caught. I remember when I was a boy, lying in bed late at night and listening to my father read aloud the words of the first charta 77 manifesto that my mother had typed, to check for errors. I did not understand all of it, but I knew it was important, and dangerous."

"I remember," Rodney said quietly after a longish silence, "lying in bed and listening to my parents argue about whether my piano lessons were a waste of money."

There was nothing to say to that, of course, but it did make Radek reflect, for a moment, about which of them had really had the more deprived and unfortunate childhood.

~*~

_**The bough that breaks, the cradle falls...** _

"So, McKay," said Zelenka after an uncharacteristically quiet luncheon. "What are your plans now?"

It was the question Rodney had been dreading -the future he'd been hoping would tend to itself... only it hadn't.

"Um," he said, resting his chin in one hand and idly stirring his cooling coffee with the other. Searching for and finding no other options, Rodney felt an unaccustomed sense of fatalism sweep over him and surrendered to bald honesty.

"Actually," he confessed, "I was considering stepping through the gate back to earth without sending my IDC. Either that or making sure the shield was down when I dialed out, and then going to stand in the 'splash zone'. Quick, painless and as fitting a way as any for a wormhole physicist to go, don't you think?"

"Rodney..." The look of horrified shock on Zelenka's face ought to have been touching, and Rodney supposed that it was, in a way. The sense of emptiness that had come to slowly fill him, as he realized that his sole purpose in life for the last twenty five years had been fulfilled, was stealing the heart out of everything else Rodney might have felt then, however, and he was finding it difficult to care. "Tell me you are not serious," Zelenka begged.

Rodney shrugged. "Well I was..." he said. "I guess I don't really have the guts to do it at this point... but I've kind of burned all my bridges. I even packed all my stuff up and gave notice on my apartment. Honestly, Radek, I'd half figured I'd be working on this for the rest of my life. I'm not sure I really believed I'd ever actually manage to pull it off, and now that I have..." he shrugged again.

Zelenka was giving him a long, considering look, frowning with deep thought. "If this is truly the case..." he said softly, apparently thinking aloud, then his voice sharpened, his gaze suggesting that he had come to some conclusion. "It may be that there is something here for you, " Zelenka said, his voice still low, but focused now. "But some arrangements must be made, and we cannot discuss it here." He looked down then, mapping out some strategy in his mind.

"For now," Zelenka said, still speaking quietly, as though he did not want anyone to hear what he was saying, "I want you to go ahead and apply for a position back on Earth, one where you know you will be refused. When they do you will want to be very... vocal about it."

"Not that this will be difficult by any stretch of the imagination," Rodney replied, puzzled. "But can you tell me why I would be engaging in this exercise in futility?"

Zelenka's frown of disapproval seemed to suggest that Rodney should be talking more quietly. "In order for it to be possible for you to do what I need you to do," he explained cryptically, "some... sacrifice to your personal dignity may be required. I apologize for this, but I am afraid that this is how it must be."

Rodney shrugged again. "Hey, if I have any personal dignity left, you're welcome to it," he said.

"Then you have more than you realize, my friend," Zelenka said, surprising Rodney just a bit. "But what I need you to do now is to go back to your quarters and apply for that position, and act in every way as if you expected to be welcomed back with open arms and open wallets."

"Sure, I can do that," said Rodney, standing and picking up his lunch tray, "but people aren't going to think I'm undignified so much as seriously stupid, if they think I really believe that."

"It all serves our purpose," Zelenka said, "and I promise I will explain it all if you come to meet me outside my lab just before dinner tonight, alright?"

"Whatever you say, Zelenka," Rodney quipped as they parted, but Rodney knew an odd sense of freedom as he left the mess hall that afternoon. For the first time in his life, Rodney McKay had cast his fate entirely to the winds and, astonishingly, he knew no fear. None at all.

***

There was more angry shouting, in English and in Czech, far too audible from behind the closed lab doors, when Rodney arrived. He had come to realize, over the last week or so of working with Zelenka, that the man showed an entirely different face to most of the new scientists under his direction on Atlantis. To those men and women, Dr Radek Zelenka was a scheming, vindictive, ill-tempered martinet. No one on Atlantis crossed Radek Zelenka -not the scientists nor the military. It had shocked Rodney at first to see how thoroughly Zelenka played the part, but he had come, sadly, to realize how necessary it was, over time.

Atlantis was no longer a safe place to have friends, or to trust. To survive here now, you needed power, influence, and a way to make people fear you, and as troubling as it was to see how well Zelenka had managed in this situation, Rodney had also seen for himself that this was not the real Radek Zelenka at all. He also came to see, over time, how it grated on Zelenka to have to keep up this unpleasant pretense, and it began to dawn on him how much he cherished the time he spent with Rodney, when he could be himself.

It had crossed Rodney's mind that maybe the reason Zelenka seemed to be trying to find a permanent position for him here, was that he did not wish to lose those precious opportunities to be himself, as he could with Rodney. While Rodney definitely felt flattered to be so well regarded, he also wasn't sure that he wanted to spend the rest of his life engaged on 'make-work' projects just so Zelenka could hang out with someone who knew that he was really a decent guy. Not that Rodney had anything better to do.

When Zelenka emerged from the labs, a little while later, he looked harried and worn, but his countenance lifted as soon as he saw Rodney.

"Thank you for bearing with me," he said as he lead Rodney down the corridor. "And I promise I will make everything clear soon."

"Fair enough," said Rodney trotting compliantly behind. "I just hope we'll be heading back to the mess in time for dinner."

"Yes, Rodney," Zelenka said with a laugh, and Rodney was content.

"I suppose," Zelekna said three transporter trips later, some distance out on the north-east pier, "that I could give you some background on the project now, though I fear I cannot discuss the specifics even here."

Looking around, it seemed to Rodney that they were quite alone, and had been for some time, but he also knew that over the last twenty five years, they had gotten the city-wide monitors fully operational, and that Dr Bryant and her cohorts in the central control room were capable of listening in on any conversation, anywhere in Atlantis. The fact that they seemed to be the only people in this part of the city made them more vulnerable to eves-dropping, not less.

"Sure," said Rodney. "Let's have it."

"You know that Woolsey only lasted here eighteen months after you left, yes?" Zelenka began.

"I guess," said Rodney. "They weren't telling me much by then, but I think I heard that."

"After him we had Wolfson, who was simply a spineless incompetent..."

"What," Rodney interrupted, "worse than Woolsey?"

"Believe it or not," Zelenka said, "by comparison, Woolsey was a model of competence and principle. Wolfson could not blow his own nose without consulting the IOA first, which even they got tired of after four years. Then they put in a man named Hatcher, and after six years of his mismanagement, he finally became so bold that it was impossible even for the IOA to ignore the drug and prostitution cartel he had set up here, and so he was sent packing."

"What!?" said Rodney, aghast. "My god..."

Zelenka nodded. "As you can imagine, moral here was very low by then," he said. "There was open drug use among many of the marines, and a number of the military command had taken part in Hatcher's criminal organization and not all of them were sent packing with him. The IOA wanted the new director to be a 'new broom' and Dr Bryant promised to do that. She did too," Zelenka said with a bitter smile. "But she did her job a little too well."

"How is that?" Rodney asked.

"When Dr Bryant came in, there was a fair sized marijuana plantation on the mainland, where the surviving Athosians we rescued from Michael and a number of other refugees had been allowed to settle." Zekenka said with amusement. "She ordered that destroyed, even though they really were using most of it for fiber production. Not all of it, of course, but..." Zelenka shrugged and chuckled.

"Also, there were about a dozen stills in the city, not counting mine," Zelenka continued, "and she and her special legion of Navy SEALs, which she brought with her as a sort of personal guard, shut them all down -as well as the handful of labs where they were making... in Czech we called it pervitin -the drugs that keeps you awake... amphetamines? which I was happy to see. She also shut down the pipeline of heroine that was coming in from Earth which, honestly, was another good thing, but then the infirmary was full of marines... and a few scientists, going through various drug withdrawals for about a month. That was not a pleasant time."

"No, I imagine not," said Rodney dryly.

"In fact," Zelenka went on, "immediately after Dr Bryant's very effective reforms, moral became even worse, to the point that, honestly, I think that the city was very close to actual mutiny."

"With you leading the rebellion, no doubt," Rodney said with a grin.

Zelenka shook his head adamantly. "Not a chance," he said. "I had no wish to be the Vaclav Havel of Atlantis... I'm afraid I was more like the [Good Soldier Švejk](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Good_Soldier_%C5%A0vejk)."

"The who what?" Rodney asked.

Zelenka laughed at Rodney's confusion. "He is a very well known character from Czech literature -an archetype or sorts. Švejk was a soldier in the armies Austro-Hungarian Empire, under whose 'protection' the Bohemian and Moravian lands fell in the time before our Independence, at the conclusion of the first World War..."

"You're losing me here, Zelenka," Rodney interrupted the, he was sure, superfluous history lesson.

Zelenka nodded, seeming to agree that he'd gotten off track. "Suffice it to say that he typifies the Czech manner of resiting oppression: You may be able to force us to do a thing, but you cannot force us to do it well. In fact, when the need arises, we are quite capable of doing many things spectacularly badly, and making it look like simple incompetence."

"Ah, okay," Rodney remarked with approval. "That makes sense."

"After a fashion," Zelenka replied. "We came within inches of blowing ourselves up several times in those weeks, and if any of Micheal's forces had come upon is then, we would have surrendered without a shot being fired, I fear.

"Hmm," Rodney said with a frown. "I see your point. So what changed?"

"Bryant may be a bitch, but she is not stupid," Zelenka continued. "She saw the precarious situation we were in, and knew that she had gone too far, but she also knew that she could not step back from her position -it would make her seem weak. She was also not fooled," Zelenka gave a wry grin, "by my 'Švejk' act. She knew that she could not persuade me to begin running my department competently without giving me something -some kind of inducement, and so she offered me the position of managing the black market on Atlantis."

~*~


	4. All the king's men stand still in a thunderstorm

**Předtím**

"I was seven or eight years old the first time I saw my father take it apart," Radek reminisced. "And the first time he let me help him was when I was eleven, after the book."

"And why, pray tell, did you need to take it apart?" Rodney was in a testy mood, as the last set of alterations to the nanocite code had not worked nearly as well as they had both hoped that it would.

"Mostly it needed cleaning," Radek answered. "After any big run we would need to open up the central drum and clean off the ink roller. The ink would sometimes cake up on it and press unevenly through the stencils, so it had to be scraped off by hand. It was a dreadfully messy job, though."

"Huh, I'll bet," said Rodney.

"I went with my father to work in the school's coal cellar late at night, which was when he usually went to do printing runs," Radek explained, "and it was always terribly messy work, in part because we his the cyclostyl under the pile of coal, and our hands and faces would be black with coal dust whenever we removed it, and then again when we were finished for the night and hid it again. The coal dust could be washed off, however. The ink could not, and I got so much ink on my hands that first time that my mother kept me away from school for three days, until most of the ink had come off. The ink covered newspapers we had used to clean the machine, my father burned in the school furnace."

Rodney shook his head slowly as he listened, then offered, "Man, I hated missing school."

"As did I," Radek said with a fond grin, "but luckily, my math tutor was still able to come to give his lessons, as we knew he would not at all mind seeing the ink on my hands."

"No?" Rodney asked.

"No," Radek replied. "He had been a university mathematics professor before 1969, and was purged during the 'normalization' because of some letters he had written. Later, when I began to look for a placement at a good high school myself, he had to leave us, because if it was known that I 'associated' with him, then the best schools would be closed to me. He was a good man, an excellent teacher, and a brilliant mathematician, and I was very sorry to see him go, but we both understood that it was necessary."

"What, you had to prove that you were a good communist to get into a good school?" Rodney huffed with charmingly naive outrage.

"Of course," Radek answered. "There was a political litmus test for everything of quality in those days. Honestly, I thought very little of it. My parents even encouraged me to join the SSM/SZM, the Socialist Union of Youth, which was the official communist youth party, because they knew it would be necessary for my getting a good place." Radek shrugged.

"It turned out, though," he said, "that this group was not so much the puppets of the state party as most people imagined, and so in the end I was very glad to have joined them. That is a story for another day, however."

~*~

 

_**All the king's men stand still in a thunderstorm** _

"What, really?" Rodney exclaimed, even as he realized how that explained a lot of what he had seen in the last week. "Radek Zelenka, Kingpin of the Atlantis underworld... Who'd have thought..."

"Certainly, my mother would be appalled," Zelenka said with a sigh, "and managing the local underground economy currently takes more of my time than running the science division. Unfortunately, both Dr Bryant and I are now more or less trapped in the positions we have taken. Neither one of us wishes Atlantis to blow up or fall into enemy hands, and therefore neither one of us can quit."

Rodney shrugged, shocked to find how unsurprised he was about everything, somehow. "So, what kinds of rackets are you running here, Zelenka?" he asked.

Zelenka gave a sigh as he enumerated the various vices he supplied. "Well," he began, "I have the only still in the city that never gets busted. Others do often attempt to build and run their own, but they tend not to run for too long before Bryant's goons get wind of them. Also, after Dr Bryant allowed our community of exiles to reestablish their hemp plantation off world, she let me know that any... smokable products, if they come into the city through me, would be allowed to pass."

"Wow," said Rodney, impressed. "So you're a regular Drug Czar now, eh?"

Zelenka rolled his eyes. "For alcohol and cannabis only," he pointed out. "Neither one of us wishes there to be any opium products here, or any kind of amphetamines. If I hear of them I turn them directly over to Bryant."

"Well that's sensible," Rodney shrugged, "but what about..." he raised his eyebrows suggestively, "other vices?"

"I am not running a string of call girls, McKay," Zelenka said with impatience. "I have enough interpersonal drama to manage in the labs. Given that I often have access to R & R passes for barter, however, and that many in the exile community have rather... free attitudes about intimate behaviors, my ability to get people a day or two on the mainland often amounts to the same thing. There is, of course, also a lively trade in pornography, and I generally do have access to the best of it."

"You've really got all the bases covered," Rodney said with open admiration.

Zelenka shrugged, coming to a stop in front of a doorway no different from dozens like it in the corridor down which they were walking. It opened at the pass of his hand over the sensor, and Rodney followed him into a small, dimly lit room, redolent with a set of smells Rodney knew quite well.

"Ah, so this is where all the good potatoes go to die, eh?" he said, looking over the still taking up most of the space in the room. The rest of the place was a clutter of shelves filled with empty bottles, as well as an assortment of boxes, some containing DVDs (the porn, Rodney thought, or perhaps blackmail material), others containing chocolate bars, mp3 players, game systems, and other random trade goods. Clearly, the man had quite a racket going here.

"Please," Zelenka said with a snort, bringing the lights up. "Potatoes are for making knedliky, but any good Moravian will tell you that it is fruit you want to make good, cheap liquor."

"I thought you were Bohemian," Rodney said, taking time to admire the still, which was quite worthy of admiration indeed.

"A little of both, actually," said Zelenka, fiddling with various valves and then picking up a juice glass and holding it under a small tap which he opened, filling it with a few centimeters of clear liquid. He knocked it back, wincing only slightly, and then gave a satisfied grin before refilling the glass.

"Another fine batch," he said, offering some to Rodney. "Care for a shot of Zelenka's Finest Pegasus Slivovits?"

Rodney made a bit of a face, then thought, 'fate to the winds,' and tossed the liquor back. It only burned a little going down, and actually had a pleasant taste, fruit flavored but not too sweet at all. "Not bad," he said, "but you didn't drag me all the way down here to show me your still and get me drunk, did you?"

"Indeed not," said Zelenka, pulling up a couple of bottle filled crates for the two of them to sit on. "But this is the only place in Atlantis I am sure we may talk openly, without being listened to."

"Okay," said Rodney, sitting and setting the glass aside on a nearby shelf. "I guess that makes sense."

Zelenka nodded. "To be honest," he said, "I would happily pass this... franchise off to any number of people here who could run it quite competently, but as long as I run it, I have a cover for something rather more important. A project which I cannot possibly hand off to anyone else, and which I could very much use your help on."

"Fire away," Rodney replied. "What is this super secret project?"

Zelenka sat frowning for a moment before he answered. "I think it will be easier," he said, standing abruptly, "to show you."

Making his way to the wall opposite the door, Zelenka slid aside a shelf filled with various small electronics and laid his hand on a previously obscured door panel. The room beyond, revealed when the hidden door opened, seemed mostly dark, lit only by a soft, blue-greenish light, and Zelenka stepped through, beckoning Rodney to follow him.

There seemed something familiar, Rodney thought to himself, about the quality of that light, and he saw why as soon as he entered the room. It was a single stasis chamber that cast the light into the tiny room, and it was occupied. There could be no mistaking the identity of the occupant either, for all that the light was imperfect, and Rodney felt his knees grow weak as he realized who it was.

"Oh my god..." he gasped as Zelenka hastened to his side, guiding him to another crate to sit on. "Oh my god, Radek..."

Rodney felt only a small amount of embarrassment at the tears that filled his eyes, for he was, after all, an old man, and old men are entitled to moments of emotional excess, especially when faced with the sight of dear friends thought to be dead long ago. And, in point of fact, Rodney had thought this man lost to him twice, and so really, there was no shame at all in shedding a tear or two to see that the man in the stasis chamber, that Radek Zelenka had brought him to see, and save, was none other than Dr Carson Beckett.

~*~

They'd sent him an email, the IOA had, a few months after he and Jennifer had settled in on Earth. In the cool, bureaucratic terms the IOA excelled at, the email explained how, given the current need for Atlantis to minimize its power consumption, the stasis chamber containing Carson Beckett's clone had to be considered excessive, and the project 'terminated'.

He'd cried then, and Jennifer had come home hours later to find him still hunched in front of the computer, window with the email still open, with his face in his hands, weeping helplessly. When she'd read the email, she'd joined him.

"They did it to get back at us," Rodney had sobbed furiously when he found himself capable of speaking. "That power use nonsense... it was just an excuse. This was retaliation, pure and simple.. the bastards!"

For months afterward, Rodney had been left with a burning anger in his soul and a conviction that if he ever saw Woolsey again he'd kill him with his bare hands, but he never really expected to see Woolsey again. It was years later that he'd learned that the bureaucrat had returned to Earth only a few months after he had, and by then Rodney was deep into his quest to correct the timeline and had no time or attention for revenge. Funny, Rodney reflected, how obsession can bring about forgiveness of sorts.

Forgiveness aside, Rodney harbored not one kind thought for Richard Woolsey, and several uncharitable ones, but what Radek Zelenka told him that evening shook him, and made him consider the beleaguered bureaucrat in a new light.

"In all honesty," Zelenka explained as Rodney stared with disbelief at the visage of his friend caught in the stasis chamber, "you have Woolsey to thank for this as much as me."

"How..." Rodney murmured, "how could that be? Woolsey had him murdered."

"It was the IOA that ordered the stasis chamber be powered down," Zelenka clarified. "Woolsey was stuck with the job of carrying those orders out... and he handed the job to me."

As Zelenka gazed across at the stasis chamber, Rodney could only see the blue glow of the field reflected on the man's glasses. His eyes remained hidden, as he recounted his part in Beckett's rescue.

"At first I thought that Woolsey just didn't want to dirty his hands," Zelenka said, his voice as distant as his eyes. "And I didn't want him to think that he could keep himself so removed... wanted him to know that his hands were just as bloody as the rest of the IOA's...so I asked him what he wanted me to do with the body."

Zelenka's voice had gone icy as he recounted the incident, but not, Rodney suspected, as frigid as it would have been when he had asked Woolsey that question. He waited in silence to hear what Woolsey had said.

"...And he told me," Zelenka said after a moment, "that he trusted that I knew what to do, and that he didn't need to see anything... That I should just tell him when the job was done and that he would want to see the empty chamber at some point."

He stepped closer to the chamber now, so that the light shone on Zelenka's face rather than just his lenses, and Rodney could see how his eyes were haunted.

"I thought it was just cowardice at the time... but when I think back now..." Zelenka turned his troubled gaze on Rodney. "Woolsey was never a stupid man... he had to have known what I was capable of... where my loyalties lay. Rodney, I think that man had a conscience hidden deep inside him, and I think he suffered nearly as much as the rest of us."

"Well, we'll never know now," Rodney said with a bitter sigh. "Woolsey died of prostate cancer two years ago. They let me know *that* for some reason."

Zelenka bowed his head. "This I am sorry to hear," he said softly. "So many truths will be lost with him."

Rodney shrugged again, trying to align the Woolsey Zelenka spoke of with the one he had come to despise for so long and failing. That was all in the past, however, and for the first time in a long while, Rodney realized, he had a future worth considering, and it lay in the stasis chamber in front of him.

"Getting back to the present," he said, breaking Zelenka's mournful reverie. "I assume you have a plan for getting Carson out of there that you need me for?"

Zelenka nodded. "We have all of Dr Keller's notes on the serum she was trying to develop to correct the organ failure he was experiencing, and Dr Biro tried to work on it for years, but she has never had the time or resources to give the project, and frankly, Dr Keller's skills in this area were far more developed. Biro is a gifted pathologist, but this is not her field."

Rodney nodded. "So you need an alternative approach," he said. "One that doesn't rely on an overworked, under-qualified medical department. What have you come up with?"

"What else, McKay?" Zelenka asked, and there, Rodney's heart leapt to see, was that sparkle of mischievous genius in the man's eyes again. "Nanocites!"

~*~


	5. Hush Little Baby, Dry Your Eyes...

**Předtím**

"So what was the closest call you ever had?" Rodney asked Radek. They were making real progress now, and both he and Rodney had every expectation that this simulation run would reveal that this code was the winner, the one that would repair Carson Beckett's organs and keep them functioning for the rest of his not-so-natural life.

"Well," Radek said after a moment's consideration, "there were the two 'coal holidays', which occurred while we were still keeping the cyklostyl at the school. Those were the times that there was a coal shortage during the winter and the schools had to be closed because they could not be heated. There was no coal in the coal pile to hide the cyklostyl under at such times, so my father placed it in the furnace itself, under the theory that no one would be using it while there was no coal. We all worried a great deal during those times, but nothing came of it."

"The most serious trouble we ever had, though," Radek considered further, "would probably be after my uncle Zdednek was arrested for the third time, in 1985. In the Soviet Union, Gorbachev had begun Perestroika, but in Czechoslovakia, most people knew nothing of it, and our government was as hard line as ever, perhaps harder. If one person was suspected of anti-patriotic activities, their whole family would be watched, and so when my uncle was arrested at an illegal concert, our whole family knew that we would be suspected. My mother insisted that the cyklostyl must be out of the school, where she and my father worked, so we had to find another place to hide it."

"What, like in a secret room in your basement or something?" Rodney asked.

"You will recall perhaps," Radek pointed out, "that our house had burnt down by then. Fortunately, after that horrible winter when we lived in a tent, the school cleared all the rubbish out of the tiny flat at the back of the school where the školník and his family usually lived, and my parents, my brother and sister and I were all able to move in there. My grandparents had to go live with my mother's sister. That meant that we were living even closer to the cyklostyl than before, and also much more under our neighbor's watchful eyes than before, when we had been living in a house on the very edge of town. If any of our neighbors saw us doing anything suspicious there they would have gone to the police, especially since the police had probably visited all our neighbors by then, to tell them to keep an eye on us."

"They expected your own neighbors to narc on you?" Rodney said, incredulous.

"Everyone 'narced' on everyone in those days, Rodney," Radek answered sadly. "It was what you did to survive. Anyone who did not tell tales on their neighbor at some point must be considered suspect, so everyone told, all the time."

"But that..." Rodney struggled with the concept. "That's... sick..."

"I do not deny it," Radek said with sorrow. "No Czech would, but the government had learned by then what many despotic governments have learned, that it is not such a hard thing to keep a nation docile when everyone must fear their neighbor. Dr Bryant has learned that lesson as well, I am sorry to say, and I am sorrier still to confess to you that I have done my part to create that atmosphere here."

"Radek, why would you do that?" Rodney said, aghast.

"Because of him," Radek nodded towards the stasis chamber where Carson Beckett slept. "I have done many despicable things towards the end of keeping Dr Bryant's reign secure and stable, because as long as she controls Atlantis then I am free to help Carson." Radek looked down struggling, not for the first time, with the question of whether the ends could truly justify his means. "When he is safe, and free," Radek said, a promise he had made to himself many times, and repeated to Rodney now, "when he free then... things will be different... and I have taken steps... I cannot speak of them now, but things will be changed. I swear it."

"Um... okay," Rodney said after a moment. "So, ah, where did you end up hiding the, ah, mimeograph machine?"

"Ah," said Radek, feeling a surge of gratitude for the unspoken trust and forgiveness that Rodney's question implied. "Nearly every family in Czechoslovakia then, and in the Czech Republic today, has some parcel of land in a Zahrádkářské kolonie -an allotment garden, where many, many such parcels are situated together, at the edge of town, or scattered about various neighborhoods in a city. Our village was no different, but in a plot adjacent to ours was a plot that had been owned by an old woman, with nearly no family. She was such a mean spirited old hag that everyone understood why her children had all left her, but she used to keep rabbits on her garden plot, which she doted on -until she killed and ate them." Radek chuckled at Rodney's shocked look, but Radek recalled many fine rabbit dinners from his youth, and months when his familiy would have had no meat at all had it not been for the rabbits and chickens his mother and aunts raised.

"In the winter before she died," Radek continued with his remeniscence, "all of her rabbits caught some disease and died, and she was too distraught -and old and feeble- to dipose of the bodies, so they were left there to rot, and probably be eaten by rats. Obviously, no one wanted to go there, not even after she died late that summer, and some cousin from the city came to take posession of her things, and the garden plot. The place came to be overgrown and abandoned, and so was the prefect place, a year later, to hide the cyklostyl."

"What... with the dead rabbits?" Rodney asked with a horrified grimace.

"Right there in the hutch, with the rabbit bones and old, moldy hay," Radek nodded, flashing a ghoulish grin. "The more unsavory the hiding place, the better, you know."

"So did you go out to this garden plot late and night and do print runs in the rabbit hutch?" Rodney asked with distaste. Radek shook his head.

"No, that would have been much too conspicuous," he said. "It remained there, undisturbed in for over a year, in fact, for I was away at university during that time, and neither my mother nor any of my aunts would let any of their husbands go and get the thing."

"But it was safe there?" Rodney said.

"In some ways," said Radek. "The police never found it, and no one else in my family became suspected of anything, which was very fortunate for me, for I would never have gotten into any good schools had my family gotten into any further trouble."

"But?" Rodney asked.

"But because we had built a large crate to protect and hide the cyklostyl inside the rabbit hutch," Radek said with a rueful smile, "a stray cat found her way into the it and decided that it would be very fine for having her kittens in. She must have had at least two litters right there on top of the machine, and it took me four different attempts to get all the cat hair out of it."

Radek could tell that Rodney was trying not to laugh and Radek decided to let him off the hook.

"It does seem funny now," he said, "I'll admit, but I must tell you, it was a very risky thing, both for me and the machine, when I took it from the old garden in my parent's villiage to my flat in Prague, where I was attending university, to work on it. One of my lab partners had a space he was using to cook... you said it was called... 'methamphetamine'? And he let me share the space to store the cyklostyl and later, leave the various parts soaking in solvent for days at a time, because it had not been cleaned properly before we hid it, naturally, and the combination of dried ink and cat hair was almost its undoing. In truth, the machine was never quite the same after that, but it lasted long enough to do several final services for the revolution, and that was all that was needed."

"Well, I suppose that's all any of us can ask," said Rodney, his voice suddenly haunted. "Isn't it?"

"I suppose," said Radek, realizing only then that he was not so much telling a story about his past as he was telling a story about their future, and the insight shook him to the core.

"I suppose that is so," he said, because what else was there to say, really?

~*~

_**Hush Little Baby, Dry Your Eyes  
Could This Be, Reason Enough?** _

Reprogramming the nanocites they had from the late Dr Elizabeth Weir to rebuild and maintain Carson Beckett's internal organs was no easy task, and Rodney hadn't expected that it would be. What took him by surprise was the agonizing farce required to get him a permanent place on Atlantis' science team.

Rodney did as Zelenka had requested, and applied for an open position of the sort that ought to have been a cakewalk for him to get into twenty five years ago, and as expected, got a form-letter refusal. It still wasn't hard to get up a good head of righteously indignant steam about it when Dr Bryant called him into her office to ask why he hadn't left Atlantis yet, and it was, indeed, humiliating as hell to confess to her that he had no place to stay back on Earth.

"And I suppose you think that we'll have a place for you here?" she asked, her voice dripping with disdain.

"I, ah, realize that it would mostly be up to Dr Zelenka..." Rodney ventured meekly.

"It's his department," Bryant said dismissively. "He can hire who he likes... Not that I expect that he'll have any use for you, though he may, after all, think of something. You'll have to ask him yourself." Her smile, as she said this last, was positively chilling, in a startlingly unwholesome way that managed to make clear to Rodney that she'd be listening in on that conversation, because she could, and because she really enjoyed seeing people humiliated.

This was all part of the plan he and Zelenka had discussed, and Rodney had agreed to every degrading detail. Still, he truly dreaded the meeting he was about to have with Zelenka, not just because it was going to be the most humiliating moment of his life (which had featured a lot of humiliating moments recently), but because he was going to come face to face with the worst side of the really ugly persona Zelenka had been using for years now, as head of Atlantis' science division. Rodney didn't want to have to face him, and he knew that Zelenka rather loathed himself when he had to take the role as well. Rodney had silently promised them both a good, serious drunk when it was all over, but he had to get it over with first. 

The expression 'hat in hand' seemed rather apt to Rodney's position as he knocked timidly on the door to Zelenka's office, and he found himself wishing that he actually had a hat to clutch in his hands. It would give him something to do with them. Instead he found himself wringing them nervously, and that can't have looked particularly dignified, but then, he reminded himself, undignified was the look they were going for, so maybe it was just as well.

"What the hell are you still doing here, McKay," Zelenka said, looking up from his laptop in response to Rodney's knock. "I thought we'd seen the last of you. Don't you have a fine new job to go to back on Earth?" Zelenka would have heard, as had everyone in the city by now, of Rodney's misfortune, and of his humiliating confession in Dr Bryant's office, so his question was purely and simply mean-spirited and he made no attempt to hide that fact as he asked it.

"Yes, well," Rodney stammered, "as it happens... I, ah, I don't... and I find I'm in a bit of, um... a situation."

"And so now you must come crawling back to me," Zelenka said with entirely undisguised glee, "your former 'minion', to beg for a job, yes?"

"In... in a manner of speaking," Rodney managed, "I suppose..." He was wringing his hands so hard now that the joints hurt, and even though this was all 'play-acting', it felt all too real to Rodney.

"You know, of course," Zelenka said coolly, "that we are already badly overstaffed, due to the number of wretched incompetents we must take on as favor to various IOA members."

"I, ah, I'd heard that, yes," Rodney said miserably.

"And still you have the gall to come in here and ask me for a position?" Zelenka said. "Do you think I owe you something McKay? Or that I have some fond feeling in my heart for the great quantities of abuse I endured under your glorious leadership?"

"I, um..." Rodney hated this. It was ugly. Zelenka was ugly and there was some unsavory glint in his eye as he stood and stepped around the desk towards Rodney.

"No," Zelenka said, standing right in Rodney's personal space without flinching. "I think you will have to make it worth my while, McKay."

"What... Zelenka," Rodney gulped, "I have no idea what you're talking about..."

"Don't you?" Zelenka hissed, and Rodney felt a hand reach around behind him and grope his ass.

"What are you...?!" Rodney squeaked. "Oh, you have got to be kidding..."

"Not in the least, McKay," Zelenka said, reaching up to run his thumb over Rodney's lower lip, and there could be no mistaking what Zelenka was imagining Rodney doing with those lips. "If you wish favor from me, you know what you must do... and you can begin by closing the door..."

Slowly and reluctantly, Rodney did just that... and that marked the end, thankfully, of the performance, though it did not mark the end of the theatrics. No one in the labs could see or hear what was happening in Zelenka's office, though there was every likelihood that Bryant or one of her goons could hear at least, so they sat in silence for several minutes and then Zelenka let out an astonishingly convincing groan, then he reached up and mussed Rodney's hair and, to Rodney's dismayed astonishment, actually produced a raw onion and sliced it on his desk, right in front of Rodney's face so that in a few moments Rodney's eyes were red and teary.

From the point of view of those in the lab just outside Zelenka's office, there could be no mistaking what had just transpired when Zekenka propelled Rodney out of it with a vilely satisfied smirk. The schadenfreude was so thick in the air you could almost smell it and there was nothing artificial about Rodney's shamed blush as he hurried out of the labs. He found he was shaking as he made his way to his quarters, which no doubt was also witnessed by everyone he passed in the corridor, and surely lent wings to what was to become the juiciest bit of gossip to emerge on Atlantis in years.

"I think it may have set some speed records," Zelenka mused much later, as he and Rodney perched on their crates besides the still, full glasses of Zelenka's Finest Pegasus Slivovits in their hands.

"Terrific," Rodney said without enthusiasm as he downed a sizable swallow of the liquor, wondering how much he'd have to get down before he got drunk enough for the sense of horror to pass.

"I know it was unpleasant," Zelenka said apologetically, "but now no one will question why I gave you a job, or why the two of us are away from the labs for so many hours together."

Rodney knocked back another swig of Zelenka's moonshine, blinking back tears at the burn it left, and reflected that the man was entirely correct and, after a fashion, rather brilliant.

"When ever did you learn to be such a devious bastard, Zelenka?" Rodney asked when he had his voice back.

"Ah, well," Zelenka said, his gaze on his glass of liquor growing unfocused for a moment. "That was some time ago... but such skills are never really lost, I have discovered." He then tilted his glass back and drank off nearly half of it in one go, much to Rodney's astonishment.

"That is not a tale for tonight, however," Zelenka said, not so much as wincing as he swallowed his drink. "Tonight is for drinking, but I will tell you this story later, if you are interested."

"Yeah, sure," Rodney said, shuddering his way through another generous swallow. "Why not?"

~*~

Rodney did indeed get to hear the story of where Radek Zelenka had learned all of his deviousness over the weeks that followed, and it did leaven the otherwise extremely tedious task of refining the nanocite program to do what they wished it to. Now he began his days in the lab, working on the astonishingly bone-headed make-work tasks Zelenka had assigned to him, and some time around mid day Zelenka would come into the lab where Rodney worked and call him out into the hall for a 'conference', and shortly after this Rodney would return to his labs and pack up his things, trying his best to look as though he were heading off to do the thing he dreaded most in the world.

This might have been harder if everyone else in the lab wasn't already quite sure where it was that Rodney was going and what he and Dr Zelenka would really be doing. The lewd stares and disgusting comments that followed him out of the lab every day had him blushing and hunching his shoulders in misery as he left, and no one could have possibly guessed that he was, in fact, very pleased to be heading off to Zelenka's secret lab, to save the life of a dear friend.

It took them eleven days to get the nanocites to work properly in their simulation, and then they had to wait another four days after that until Dr Biro could arrange to 'borrow' the medical equipment they needed, and to find an evening when she shared the night shift with two orderlies who were happy to take a bribe in exchange for not noticing that the doctor was away from her post for most of her shift. Helen Biro had been aware of Carson's continued presence on Atlantis from the beginning, of course, and while she had been dubious about the likelihood of their ever being able to revive him, she was fully supportive of their current efforts, and guardedly optimistic when she arrived that night with a gurney, a scanner, a crash cart, and other sundries lifted, for the evening, from the infirmary.

"If you're confident it will work, Dr McKay," she said crowding herself and all their gear into the tiny space, "then I'm sure it will."

"Confident?" Rodney groused. "I haven't been 'confident' about anything in decades, except perhaps about how my life is destined to suck. The simulations look good. That's all I know."

More nervous than he could remember being in a very long time, Rodney powered down the stasis chamber and he and Zelenka together shouldered Carson's unresponsive body onto the gurney, where Biro sedated him and placed him under the scanner. Once they'd established that his heart rate and breathing were stable they introduced the nanocites, then they sat back to wait. Rodney and Zelenka each had a glass of Zelenka's moonshine while they waited, though Biro demurred, mentioning that she'd take a couple of joints to celebrate later, if Zelenka had anything, which he did. Rodney raised his eyebrows, but said not a word.

Four and a half nail-biting hours later, the scanner revealed that the nanocites were doing exactly as they were supposed to do, no more and no less, and Rodney felt a little bit of hope steal its way into his heart. There was a relieved and pleased smile that kept creeping onto Zelenka's face even as he clearly labored to keep his expression to his customary dour frown, and Rodney saw Biro crack the first smile he had seen her give since he'd returned to Atlantis. An hour after that Carson's sedation began to wear off and Biro said it would be fine for him to wake up, as long as he mostly stayed in bed for the next twenty four hours.

Rodney and Zelenka had discussed, just a little, how they might manage introducing Carson Beckett to the strange and unhappy new world to which he would be waking, and the first thing they did was dim the lights in the tiny secret lab so that he wouldn't see them clearly right away. Biro concurred that this was probably a good approach to take, and then they all took a moment to regret the passing long ago of Dr. Kate Hieghtmeyer, whose services Carson would certainly have been able to use, had she been available. The current on-station psychiatrist, Dr Alan McMurray was, sadly, a confederate and lackey of Dr Bryant (and notorious for ignoring the principle of doctor/patient confidentiality when it suited him), and therefore no one they could turn to now. They would have only their mutual trust and the bonds of their long-ago friendship to support them, but the part of Rodney that was gradually remembering how to hope had a good feeling that this would be more than enough.

They stood, flanking him in the darkened room -Rodney on his right, Zelenka on his left and Biro standing at his feet- when they first saw Carson Beckett stir, then mumble groggily, his voice rough with disuse. Rodney reached across to place a hand under his shoulder, a cup of water with a straw at the ready.

"Carson?" he called softly. "Are you with us?"

Carson made another inarticulate questioning noise, and then, "Rodney...? Is that you? Am I...?"

"Yeah, it's me," Rodney said and he could hear the smile in his own voice. "You're okay, Carson. You just need to take it easy for a little bit. You want some water?"

"Aye," Carson managed and so Rodney helped him carefully to sit while Radek angled the top half of the gurney up and then Rodney pressed the cup into Carson's hands, guiding the straw to his lips. Carson slowly drank a few sips, looking around the dimly lit room as he did. "Who..." he ventured now, his voice much recovered, "who else is here?"

"I am here as well, my friend," Zelenka said, placing a gentle hand on Carson's other shoulder.

"Hey Carson," Biro said as well. "Good to have you back with us."

"Helen? Radek?" Carson ventured. "It's good to hear you too... though your voices all sound a wee bit off... and why is it so dark in here?"

Rodney, Zelenka and Biro all exchanged glances and finally Zelenka ventured an answer. "I am... sorry to say that things have not gone all that well here since you were last with us... and it has taken considerably longer to effect your restoration than we had once hoped."

Carson set his cup of water down on the crate they'd set at his bedside and looked around at them, his eyes wide and anxious. "How long..." he finally asked in a hushed voice. "How long has it been?"

"It's... it's been twenty five years, Carson," Rodney said with an unhappy swallow. "I am so, so sorry..."

There was a long moment of stunned silence before Carson choked, "My god..." and then, "I... I want to see you... all of you. Can you turn up the lights, please?"

After a second's hesitation, Zelenka reached back and moved his hand over a control panel and the lights slowly came up, revealing his thick glasses and long, gray hair, Biro's care-worn and deeply lined face, and Rodney's own changed visage. Carson's eyes went wider still as he looked from one to the other of them, then reached out to Rodney, taking the hand he proffered.

"Dear god what's happened?" he asked as he clutched at Rodney's hand. "Why aren't I in the infirmary? Where are the others? What the bloody hell has happened here, Rodney?"

Rodney found himself blinking hard, but he couldn't keep it in, not any of it. "Oh god it's all gone so wrong," he burst out, grabbing at Carson's other hand to hold it just as tightly. "Everything... it's all so fucked up... Sheppard's gone and Jennifer and Teyla and Ronon and Sam are all dead and I totally trashed my career and my sister isn't speaking to me any more and Atlantis... Atlantis is nothing like you remember it was... and... and they told me you were dead, Carson... that I'd lost you again..." Rodney was sobbing now, and Carson was pulling him into a tight embrace, surprising Rodney with his strength.

"But we got you back.." he choked into Carson's shoulder. "We got you back... me and Radek and Dr Biro and... and Miko helped too... and I swear it's the first good thing that's happened to me in twenty five years..."

"Ah, luv..." Carson murmured, holding Rodney close, even as Rodney felt the others draw in, surrounding them both in a larger embrace. "Ah, luvs, I'm here now. I'm with you. I'm bloody well back with you."

In all his long life, Rodney McKay had never been more grateful for his friends, or heard words of greater comfort.

~*~


	6. The Beast That Down to Eden Crawls

**Předtím**

"Perhaps I should tell you more about my printing press?" Radek suggested.

"There's more?" Rodney probably meant to make it a snark, but he was too nervous and anxious -for good reason- and his voice, over the radio, only sounded a bit pleading. Radek let it pass. The cell where he and Carson had been placed was not so small as to exacerbate Rodney's claustrophobia, Radek was fairly sure, but their capture and arrest had to have been fairly traumatizing for him. Rodney had no way of knowing, either, which was by intent, of Radek's long laid plans to free him, to free them all, from the oppressive prison that Atlantis had become. Those plans were all unfolding as intended, but while other pieces on the chessboard were moving, unseen by Rodney or Carson, their part for now was only to wait, and stay safe.

Though it must seem to them that they were in enemy hands with no hope of escape, Radek knew that as long as he kept the line open with Rodney, and stayed in contact with him, then he retained the upper hand, and that they were as safe there as they would be anywhere on Atlantis. Bryant might hold Rodney and Carson as hostages, but Radek held the whole city. All he needed to do now was stay in contact with Rodney and keep him calm, so he wasn't tempted to do something rash, as he almost had earlier.

"Of course there is more," Radek said. "It is the best part."

"Um, sure, if you say so," Rodney replied uneasily, his voice jittery. "Go ahead then. It's not like I've got anything better to do."

"Rodney," Radek could hear Carson's voice over the radio in the background. "Will you settle down and sit? You're like to drive me starkers with all that pacing."

"Sit, Rodney," Radek commanded, in the same tone of voice he'd once heard some woman on TV use to order dogs. "Sit and listen to a tale of hope and triumph, and remember that there is hope for you as well." It was as much as he could say now, and Radek hoped with all his heart that Rodney could hear that hidden message.

"Fine," Rodney acquiesced with an ill mannered sigh. "Sitting."

"Very good," Radek said, ignoring Rondey's rudeness easily. "Now you will recall that I had cyklostyl with me at university, yes?"

"Yes..." Rodney intoned and Radek could actually hear his eyes roll.

"I was in Praha... Prague then, though it was the same in every university in our country," Radek continued. "Those of us who had joined the youth party, we were supposed to be good socialists, but some of us had heard things -about Perestroika in the Soviet Union, about the mobs of East German citizens coming to the Czech embassy to leave their own country, about the violent suppression of the Candle Demonstration in Bratislava the year before. Whispers of such things were flying thick at every university, and little presses like mine did their part to spread the news. It was an exciting and terrifying time."

"I can imagine." That was Carson's voice. Rodney must have keyed his radio into the same channel.

"For me, it was especially... fraught," Radek said. "I had two rolls to play, and one I had to keep very carefully secret from the other. To keep my place in my department, I had to look like the very model of socialist youth, and never even speak of the rumors flying about the school. There were further rewards for this behavior, as I was given the job of managing... in an American or Canadian school I suppose they might call it something like the Cultural Forum. It was the school organization that had different speakers and performers come to the school... and so I had access to the lecture hall where these events were to take place. This was a considerable privilege"

"Quite the operator back then," quipped Rodney, "weren't you?"

"I was," Radek said, "though it was no easy road to walk. I allowed the SSM to hold meetings there, but when I attended these meetings, some were reluctant to speak of their true feelings and plans while I was there, thinking that I was the person I wished my professors and the authorities to believe I was. It was in these meetings that the strike, and the first protests were planned, and had I truly been the government tool that I made myself out to be, then I would have turned all of these students over to the authorities. More than once they tried to have me thrown out."

"Aye, that would have been hard," Carson commented.

"The rewards of living a double life," Rodney added.

"The cyklostyl became my credential of sincerity," Radek said. "Only a handful of others knew where I kept it -the ones I trusted enough to help me with printing runs and with distribution, but they were happy to set the record straight with regards to my true loyalties. It was very gratifying."

"I'll bet," said Rodney, and Radek could hear in his voice the same wish he held himself -that more people on Atlantis could know that he never had been the tool of the establishment he let himself be seen as. Well, they would all know the truth soon enough, but by then it would be too late to make the good friends he might have made. He knew that there were a number of good and decent scientists and military personnel who had come to Atlantis over the last dozen years or so, but all they had known of him was a man they would never want to befriend.

It came as a considerable relief to Radek that, very soon now, the record would at last be set straight as to who he really was. Still, he knew that the regrets he had about the last twenty years of his life would linger, and probably never vanish. When he remembered Rodney McKay's tearful reunion with Carson Beckett, however, Radek knew that it had all been worth it.

 

~*~

 

_**The Beast That Down to Eden Crawls** _

They tried never to leave Carson alone over the next few days, which meant that Rodney did not see so much of Zelenka during that time. It also meant that Rodney did not know what Zelenka had told Carson, just as Zelenka didn't know what Rodney had told him. As a result, Carson Beckett ended up getting two rather disjoint versions of the history of the last twenty five years during his first few days back among the waking, and he seemed as much confused as depressed by it all. Rodney worried about him, but eventually Carson let him know that he was okay.

"It is a lot to take in, I'll own," he said, "but it seems as if I weathered it all as well as anyone, better in some ways. At least I'm alive and well, which is more than a lot of people have managed."

"But having to hear about it all at once," Rodney said. "That's got to be hard."

"No harder than it was for you, having to live through it all," Carson answered.

"I guess," said Rodney. "I... I can't imagine what it's like for you right now... except I suppose I wouldn't mind being twenty five years younger."

Carson laughed at that. "Well, it's you I've to thank for that as much as anything," he said. "I must confess that when you first told me you'd used nanocites to put me right, I was a wee bit troubled, but it's been more than a week now and Helen and I have gone over my test results a half dozen times, and the little buggers are working perfectly. It was a brilliant piece of work, Rodney, make no mistake."

"Well, it was Radek's work as much as mine," Rodney said, aware of the slightly shocked look Carson was giving him. He'd have reacted differently to such praise long ago, that's what Carson had to be remembering. He was a different man now, though, and Carson was still discovering that. Rodney hoped that he wasn't too different and that Carson Beckett would still find him worthy of his friendship. As if to answer that question, Rodney felt Carson's hand come to rest gently on his arm.

"Aye," he said softly. "The two of you were always at your best when you worked together. It's wonderful to see that's still true."

"Yeah, it is," Rodney answered, his own voice quiet with the astonishment he still felt. "I didn't realize how much I missed that... how much I missed him. And I knew I missed you, but I had no idea that there was any way to get you back." Rodney shook his head.

"So many things I... I loved that I thought I'd lost forever," he said, "and now that I've got them back I'm scared to death to lose them again, and right now... all this," Rodney gestured around at the tiny hidden sanctuary they'd made for Carson, "it could all come crashing down any second."

"Radek says he's got it all in hand," Carson said, his grip on Rodney's shoulder tightening just a bit. "I trust him. He's managed brilliantly so far."

"Yeah, he has," Rodney said, trying to feel the confidence Carson seemed to have. "It's just hard, right now... to feel safe... with so much to lose."

"Aye, luv," Carson said kindly. "I know."

~*~

"I've sent a message," Zelenka had said the day after they'd resuscitated Carson. "But it may take some time to get to the intended recipient. Arrangements have been made, and things will be set in motion as soon as I hear from them, but until then we will have to wait."

Zelenka sounded apologetic about it, though Rodney suspected that yet more of Zelenka's particular brand of devious brilliance would be revealed when all was said and done. The man seemed to take little or no pride in his talents in this domain, though Rodney supposed he understood, a little. He and Zelenka would both far rather be remembered as scientists rather than subversives, but it seemed that they were now required to display talents in the latter field in order to work in the former. Such was the world they lived in now.

"I am sorry I cannot tell you more," Zelenka had continued with sincere regret, "but I think it best that you know as little as possible of the plans I have made, to be on the safe side."

"No, I get it," Rodney had assured him. "I do. You've got it covered and it's better that we don't know; believe me, I understand. Just let us know what you need us to do."

"Thank you," Zelenka had said, removing his glasses to rub at his eyes. Rodney saw the weight of the burden the man carried then, possibly because he was finally seeing a possibility that he might be finished with it soon, and Rodney's heart went out to him.

"Just stay safe," Zelenka had said. "Stay out of Bryant's way; stay away from her goons; don't draw any attention to yourself." Zelenka had looked up then, a wistful smile on his face. "I know in the past, that might have been a ridiculous thing to ask of you, Rodney," he said. "But lately, you've been very good. I suppose that in itself might be seen as noteworthy, but the people here don't really know you, for which I am grateful."

In a way, Rodney realized, he was in the same boat as Zelenka. People here knew him only as a pathetic has-been -a meek and all but broken creature who submitted daily to his new boss/former minion's humiliations without a word of complaint. Rodney hadn't really given this new persona any thought until he had spent some time with Carson, who found the change in him both shocking and worrying.

"Hey, I'm still brilliant," Rodney had assured Carson. "I just... I was working alone for so long, all of my underling abuse habits kind of went by the wayside. And, you know, maybe I have mellowed. I've gone through a lot the last couple of decades; we all have."

Carson had just looked at him, and shaken his head a little sadly.

They managed to keep Carson secret for over two weeks.

He remained restricted to the tiny room where his stasis chamber remained, and the room where the still was, which Zelenka was terribly apologetic about, even though Carson told him he understood why it had to be that way. Eventually, Zelenka moved another set of shelves away from the wall in the still room, revealing yet another obscured doorway, this one leading to a small balcony that looked out over the inlet of water between the north and north-east piers.

"It's possible that there is some small risk that you may be detected out here," Zelenka had said, "But I cannot bear the thought of you locked up in here, without even being able to see the sky any longer. It cannot be good for your health."

"I'll admit," Carson had said gratefully as he stepped out onto the balcony, "I was beginning to go a little stir crazy in there, especially when I was alone. I promise not to come out here too often, but it's good to get a little fresh air from time to time."

They'd given Carson a laptop but, of course, it couldn't be linked in to the city's network, as that would have lead to his being discovered as well, and though they'd provided him with movies, games and other media, both Rodney and Zelenka could see that the confinement and boredom were starting to wear on their friend. They tried to visit him as often as they could, but there were limits to that as well. All that they had to go on was Zelenka's repeated if vague assurance that 'things' were moving forward, and this intolerable situation would, eventually, come to an end.

"I feel like bloody Anne Frank," Carson confessed as Rodney slipped nervously into the still room with Carson's lunch one afternoon "waiting for the damned Nazis to come kicking down the door. It's downright unnerving, all this sneaking and hiding."

Rodney personally thought that comparing Bryant and her goon squad to Nazis was possibly impolitic, but also not entirely inappropriate, so he held his tongue.

"They're serving burritos for lunch today," he said instead, "so I got you one with the works... but not too much of the hot salsa. I hope that's okay?"

"Aye, that'll be fine," Carson said without enthusiasm, taking the tray of food Rodney offered. "Do you have time to stay today?" he asked.

"I do, in fact," Rodney said happily. "Zelenka stuck me with some pointless task that might be expected to take hours but which, in fact, took me all of ten minutes. I'm all yours till another witless staff meeting at four."

At this, Carson brightened visibly and Rodney felt a little of his own gloom and anxiety lift. Although he was free to roam the city, he was, in some respects, just as much a prisoner as Carson was, and the time he got to spend with Carson meant nearly as much to him as it did to the doctor. They pulled up a pair of crates and laid into their respective burritos with more gusto than either of them had felt minutes ago, and when the better part of the food was gone, fell to talking.

Carson still had a lot of catching up to do with regards to the events of the last twenty five years, and while he'd heard most of what had transpired with his friends here on Atlantis and the SGC, there was also a lot of world history, politics and other happenings that he was keen to know about. Dr Biro had sent along quite a bit of information about the various medical advances over the last quarter century, and Rodney and Zelenka had been able to update him on the current state of the sciences, but they'd neither one of them paid much attention to politics or sports or much of anything else, and so every time he went to see Carson Rodney did a fresh bit of research on a topic that Carson had asked a question about.

For today Rodney had been researching recent events in the United Kingdom, particularly the current state of the monarchy and new arrangements between Britain, Ireland, Wales and Scotland, which Carson was naturally quite interested to hear about. They stepped out onto the balcony after they'd finished their meal, finding the brisk, salt flavored breeze most conducive to aiding in their digestion, and soon found themselves lost in conversation. The sudden and loud pounding at the door caught them completely by surprise.

Rodney knew it couldn't be Zelenka. Zelenka never knocked; he didn't need to. "Oh shit," Rodney choked, his eyes wide.

"Lord no," Carson whispered, and for a second Rodney wondered if he'd have time to shuffle Carson into the stasis pod room and hide the secret entrance, but by the time he'd figured that this was unlikely in the extreme, the door blew open with a violent concussion.

It was nothing short of a miracle that the C-4 charge they'd used to blow the door hadn't started a secondary explosion in the still but, Rodney supposed, they'd probably learned to use the stuff sparingly after starting a few fairly dangerous fires while busting up the odd meth lab. Still he was very happy that they hadn't been in the room with the still, and crowded in terror at the edge of the balcony as the handful of Bryant's Navy SEALs came bursting through the door, guns at the ready.

"Dr Rodney McKay," one of them announced, spotting Rodney through the door, cowering on the balcony. "I'm going to have to ask you to come with us."

"Please," Rodney gasped, raising his hands. "I'm not doing anything wrong..." which was a patently stupid thing to say when standing behind a still and a room full of contraband, but then Carson stepped out as well, hands likewise raised.

"We'll come quietly," he promised meekly. "Just don't hurt us."

"Who the hell are you?" asked the lead SEAL when Carson appeared.

"I," said Carson, drawing himself up, all his meekness vanishing instantly, "am Dr Carson Beckett. Who the hell are you?"

"First Lieutenant Adam MacCaffe," he answered, almost automatically, then he turned to one of his fellows, saying, "Beckett? Isn't that guy supposed to be dead?" Then he turned to train his weapon on Carson, and something broke open inside Rodney.

"Don't!" he cried, turning back to the balcony, throwing one leg over the rail before he even realized what he was doing. "You hurt him, I swear I'll jump!"

"Rodney!" Carson shouted with alarm. "My god man, what are you doing?!"

Carson's face had gone dead white, but Rodney couldn't look at that. All he could see was the guns trained at the friend he had lost and found again twice, and the sense of blind panic was overwhelming anything else. "I'm not kidding," he yelled, voice close to hysterical. "He dies, I've got nothing left to lose... Nothing!"

"What," quipped another one of the SEALs, "he fuckin' you or something?"

"What the hell does that matter?" Rodney cried, shifting himself further over the edge of the balcony railing. "What does it matter if I'm just a pathetic old loser without any other friends? All that you need to concern yourselves with is knowing that if you harm one hair on his head I am going right over the side. That's a promise."

"Rodney, please..." Carson's voice was shaking and Rodney had to look then, and saw tears in his friend's eyes. "Don't do this. Please don't do this..."

"For fuck's sake McKay," MacCaffe said. "Why in god's name should we kill him? We didn't even know he was here."

"You... you said he was supposed to be dead," Rodney answered, uncertain now. "He's... inconvenient. Bryant won't want to have to deal with that..." Rodney didn't think Carson could go any paler, but he had, and Rodney hated himself for it.

"Look, McKay," MacCaffe said. "We're not here to shoot anybody. All we're here to do is extract you and put you someplace where you'll stay out of trouble. Far as I'm concerned your little friend here can come with you. How's that?"

"I... I want to hear that from Bryant," Rodney said, feeling his heart start to slow, and shivering slightly as he became aware at last of just how chill the ocean breeze was.

MacCaffe gave a put-upon sigh and touched his ear-piece, and a moment later Rodney was listening to him recount to Dr Bryant what and who he had found in Zelenka's distillery when he'd come to get McKay. "...And now he's threatening to throw himself off the pier unless you promise him personally that you won't hurt the guy... whoever he is."

Rodney watched MacCaffe's gaze draw inward as he listened Bryant's reply on his radio, then nodded to McKay, and a moment later he heard Bryant's grating voice over his own radio.

"McKay, what the hell are you doing?" she asked.

"Bargaining with the only thing I have left to bargain with," Rodney answered.

"Has it occurred to you," she replied, "that I might possibly not give a rat's ass if you threw yourself off the pier right now?"

"Yes," Rodney said with strained dignity. "Yes it has."

"And yet here you are, pulling this stunt because...?" she inquired.

"Once again," Rodney answered, with a distinct echo of his old snark, "only thing I have left. Don't have much left to lose, now do I?"

Bryant's sigh was audible over the radio. "I suppose I can see your point," she said. "All I can offer you is my word, which you may not set much store by, that my people won't harm you or the man you claim is Dr Beckett... unless you try anything else stupid. Will that do?"

"Rodney... please..." Carson was terrified, reaching one hand out towards Rodney, and Rodney knew he didn't really have any other choice.

"I suppose it'll have to," he answered Bryant, and then slipped back over onto the balcony, reaching out to take Carson's hand.

Carson pulled him into a crushing embrace as soon as he had both feet safely on the balcony again, and Rodney felt haw badly he was shaking. "Don't you ever, ever do that again you daft git," he said in a broken voice, and Rodney hugged him back, just as hard.

"Sorry, sorry," he murmured. "Really sorry. I just... I panicked, okay? I lost it, but I... they pointed their guns at you and I... I just lost it. I'm really sorry, Carson."

"I know, luv," Carson said softly. "It's all right."

One of the SEALs made a quietly disgusted noise.

"I knew they were fags," he said. Carson rounded on him, eyes blazing with fury.

"Get your mind out of the gutter, ye bloody arsewipe," he snapped. "And if you've never in your life had a good mate ye care about so much, then I bloody well feel sorry for you!"

"Stand down, Fuchs," MacCaffe said. "Let's just get these wackjobs down to the brig, alright?"

They went quietly, and about an hour after they were placed in a cell (a largish one with two cots and toilet facilities) all the power went out.

~*~


	7. Eyes Touching Eyes...

**Předtím**

There were only two things we printed in those final days," Radek continued with his narrative.

"One was a call for all students in Czechoslovakia to strike, and stay away from their classes, and the other was an announcement of a march, on November 17th, which was International Students' Day. We printed those pages until the machine nearly fell apart. The fellow who shared the lab with me brought me paper and ink, which I think he was trading for the pervitin... the, ah, 'meth' he was making, and someone at the SSM meetings kept bringing me new stencils when the old ones wore out. During the first two weeks of that November we did a print run of two hundred pages or more every night. We were quite conspicuous, I think, but no one troubled us, and now I think that there were other forces in our nation working to bring about our revolution, operating even more secretly that we were."

"How do you mean?" Carson asked, and Radek smiled, happy to answer him.

"We marched that day as planned, from University to the grave of a student martyr against the Nazis," Radek said, "and then we continued marching, many kilometers along the Vltava river towards the center of town. The police finally came to stop us as we came near Václavské Náměstí... Wenceslas Square. They trapped us there and then beat us... very badly. I was fortunate that the worst that happened to me was that I lost my glasses, but later, when they let us leave... something very strange and very important happened. Something that no one can explain."

"What was that?" Rodney asked now.

"After they let us go... those who were too badly injured to walk, their friends helped them," Radek said. "And yet, when all of us had gone, many reported seeing a body laying in the street, as though dead, and there was someone lying there... one of the secret police, who was only pretending to be dead, yet this did not come to be known for some time. Instead, word that the police had killed a student ran like fire through the people. It was even reported on Radio Free Europe. It made people angry, when all of the terror and oppression of the last fifty years had not. It was one of the reasons why, two days later, on Monday, and for many days after, so many people came to Václavské Náměstí to demonstrate."

"But..." Rodney asked, his voice perplexed, "why did he do that?"

"No one knows," said Radek. "To this day, but a week later the government was rendered all but impotent, and within the month Václav Havel was made our president."

"I remember hearing about your revolution in the news, when it happened," Carson said, "and it was said often what a miracle it was, that it was so peaceful, but I suppose it's no surprise that we didn't know the half of it."

"No one did," Radek said with a chuckle, "not even in my country. That is the beauty of it."

"If you say so," Rodney remarked dubiously. "I prefer my facts a bit more verifiable, but I imagine that's why I never became a historian."

"Neither did I, you will observe," Radek answered, "but I became part of history, nonetheless, and you may find it happening to you as well someday, Rodney. You can never predict these things."

"Which is a damned shame, if you ask me," Rodney commented, "because anybody with an ounce of sanity would take considerable pains to avoid getting sucked into that kind of crap if they could. I know I would."

"As would I," Radek agreed, "and yet, I cannot help but feel considerable pride in my actions, and my family's actions, during that time, and I am not sorry that I was there."

"Aye," said Carson softly, "I imagine so."

"One of the most important lessons I take from my youth," Radek said, "is that history may ask any of us to rise to the occasion, at any time. I think of that often these days, and I want both of you to know that I have the greatest confidence that none of the three of us would fail to rise if called. I hope you can take heart in that."

"As flattering as that is," Rodney groused, "I frankly find it a bit of cold comfort at the moment."

"Aye, but it is a comfort still," Carson said. "And I thank you for it, Radek."

 

~*~

_**Eyes Touching Eyes in the Sight of Their Long Range Guns** _

The shield surrounding their cell went out when the power did, and this made the guards exceedingly nervous. They both turned to train their guns on Rodney and Carson as soon as they realized that the shield was down, although the cell was still locked, as if they expected the two of them to try something any second.

"What? Hey! We didn't do anything!" Rodney objected fearfully, as he crowded against Carson at the back of the cell, hands upraised.

"We're not going anywhere, lads," Carson offered calmly, hands raised as well. "We're still locked in and we've nowhere to go, but if you go on like that," he nodded toward them to indicate their raised guns -fingers poised on triggers, "then it's rather inviting an accident to happen, don't ye think?"

The two guards did not lower their weapons for what Rodney and Carson both would later describe as the longest twenty minutes of their life, but eventually both of them lowered their guns slightly to answer their radios (which had not responded to their calls for information earlier). Their end of the conversation consisted of a lot of 'yes, ma'am's, which told Rodney only that they were talking to Bryant, but then one of them pulled his radio off his ear and tossed it into the cell with Rodney and Carson. When the other reported that this had been done, the shield on their cell came back on and the guard told Rodney to go and pick it up.

"It's for you," he said.

Hesitantly, Rodney and Carson both lowered their hands and Rodney stepped forward to take up the radio and hang it on his ear. The moment he did there was an anxious voice on the radio, calling his name.

"Rodney?" It was Zelenka's voice, tight with worry. "Are you there?"

"Zelenka?" Rodney answered. "What the hell...?"

"It is very good to hear your voice, McKay." Zelenka sounded relieved but not in the least relaxed. "Now I need you to listen carefully, please. I am fairly certain that this line is not secure, but I am not about to tell you anything that they do not already know. You and Carson are safe -Carson *is* there with you, yes?"

"Yeah," Rodney answered. "He's right here."

"Good, good," Zelenka replied. "Then you are both safe, because I am the reason the power went out. I am currently occupying a... specially modified jumper, parked out on the east pier, through which I am able to completely control all of Atlantis' power relays. The actual relays are locked behind a quarantine seal which I predict it will take them weeks, if not longer, to crack. Dr Bryant and I are currently... negotiating, over whether we can use this jumper to leave Atlantis. She has offered to let us leave on foot, through the gate, but you and I both know that this would be a very bad bargain. I have something far better in mind and am willing to wait to get it. If you are *patient*, Rodney, then all will go according to plan. Do you understand?"

Rodney nodded, then remembered that he had to answer out loud. He had not failed to notice how Radek had stressed certain words, and he suspected that this meant that Radek's big secret plan was still going as intended. He certainly hoped so. 

"No more suicide attempts, right," he said out loud, to which Carson responded, "Please god, no."

"Definitely not," said Radek over the radio. "Though I must say that your flair for dramatics did go a long way towards convincing Bryant that you really did have no idea what I was up to, or that I had any plan at all. For that I thank you, but you need not go to such lengths again."

"Well, I suppose it's comforting to know that I didn't entirely embarrass myself to no end at all," Rodney said. The guards had asked him and Carson, shortly after they been placed in their cell, where Zelenka was, and what his plans were, but they really hadn't known anything, and Rodney had still been coming down from his moment of panic. The result was that the guards had left them alone soon enough, and apparently given Zelenka the time he'd needed to put the next step of his plan into action.

"I have asked that Carson be given a radio as well," Zelenka now came on to say. "It should be there in just a moment. Let me know when it does, please."

"Sure," said Rodney, and indeed, a few minutes later another guard entered, bearing two radios -one for the guard to replace the one he'd given to Rodney, and one for Carson. They all three trained their guns on the cell as they shut the shield down to toss the second radio in, then the shield was up again, the guns were down, and Carson went to get his radio.

"I feel better knowing I am able to be in touch with both of you," Zelenka said once Carson had his radio on. "The two of you should not become separated if all goes according to plan, but it is better to be safe, I think."

"So what do we do now?" Rodney asked, feeling the unhappy combination of boredom and anxiety working at him badly.

"Perhaps I should tell you more about my printing press?" Zelenka suggested...

And though Rodney rolled his eyes, the tale did keep them distracted for some length of time, until Zelenka finally interrupted himself. He paused for a moment, then said, "Ah, I see it is time to release the virus; one moment, please."

"Virus? What virus?" Rodney squeaked.

"The virus that will prevent them from raising shields or powering any weapons," Zelenka answered in a voice that seemed way too calm to Rodney.

"Radek," Carson asked, worried. "What's going on, lad?"

"In a little while Dr Bryant should be instructing your guards to escort you out to where I am waiting, on the east pier," Zelenka answered, matter-of-factly. "Please keep me apprised of what is happening to you, particularly if it does not seem to be what I have instructed them to do. All continues to go as planned, my friends. Do not worry."

Rodney, naturally, found it utterly impossible to obey Zelenka's last instruction, and he could feel his heart racing and his mouth going dry. "What the hell?" he muttered, turning to Carson. "What the hell is going on?"

Carson rose from his own cot to sit next to Rodney on his, laying a hand over his shoulder. "Easy, luv," he said. "Remember we said we'd trust him, aye?"

"Trusting Zelenka," Rodney muttered. "Right, right... I can do that."

"I know ye can, luv," Carson said, rubbing his back, and sure enough, a few minutes later the guards answered their radios, then lowered the shield and unlocked the door to Rodney and Carson's cell.

"Come with us, please," one of them said, and so they did.

They kept up a narrative with Zelenka as they went, though there wasn't much to it. "Now we're going past the infirmary... Now we're going into a transporter and it's taking us to the base of the east pier..." Rodney murmured as they went, and Zelenka replied with encouraged single syllables.

Eventually they came to the landing deck of the east pier, where Rodney could see a lone jumper parked out near the far end, and Rodney told Zelenka what he saw.

"Very good," said Zelenka, and a moment later the man himself appeared at the back of the jumper, brandishing a wraith stunner.

"You will please now step back," he called out to the guards, "and allow McKay and Beckett to proceed to jumper."

Rodney and Carson exchanged bewildered glances as their guards did likewise, then shrugged and backed away. Up ahead, by the jumper Zelenka beckoned with his free hand, and Rodney and Carson complied. The fifty meter walk to the jumper seemed unaccountably long and felt very exposed, and Rodney kept looking around, expecting trouble from every direction, but none came. Zelenka welcomed them with a relieved grin when they finally reached the jumper and they entered together.

Inside the jumper was organized chaos. There were crates and boxes stacked everywhere, and a number of the jumper's control panels were open, wires and cables strung haphazardly across the rear compartment. "What the hell?" Rodney asked, looking around and trying to make sense of the mess.

Zelenka set the stunner down and took both their hands, his eyes alive with nervous excitement. "We are nearly there," he said, tense but happy. "And we may at last speak freely here. The virus I spoke of earlier did not merely incapacitate Atlantis' weapons, but it also deactivated their planetary sensors. The do not know that there is a ship in orbit and another one descending even now to meet us here."

"What... kind of ship?" Rodney asked.

"Another jumper," Zelenka said, grinning like a madman.

"Another jumper?" Rodney echoed. "Who the hell has another..."

"The Travelers!" Carson cried, his memories of those events rather more recent than Rodney's. "It's the Travelers, isn't it? Ye've gotten Larrin's people to come and help us, haven't ye?"

"Larrin?" Rodney was incredulous. "You got that crazy woman to come rescue us? Is she even still alive?"

"She was when I spoke to her last year," Zelenka answered. "Though most recently it was her son I spoke to. He is the one flying jumper."

"Her... son?" Rodney sat heavily, barely avoiding some bit of delicate equipment laying on the seat.

"Naturally," Zelenka answered. "You know that there is a rather high prerogative to produce offspring among the Travelers."

"Aye, of course," Carson said thoughtfully. "How long ago did you make this arrangement, lad?"

Zelenka answered with an almost sheepish smile. "The details were settled on almost fifteen years ago," he said, "when I thought I might have the time to complete your nanocite program on my own. Things did not move so quickly as I would have liked, but we continued to keep in touch, and the deal remained open."

"And they're coming to get us here, what, out of the goodness of their hearts?" Rodney asked.

"No, indeed not," Zelenka answered. "They are coming for this." He gestured to indicate the stacks of crates in the back of the jumper.

"And 'this' is...?" Rodney pressed.

"Ten notebooks, a dozen removable hard drives, close to three hundred DVDs, one nahquadah generator, the better part of your puddle jumper hyperdrive, and me," Zelenka said.

"My god, you're robbing them blind," said Rodney with an equal mix of astonishment and admiration.

"Well it's nothing they don't deserve," Carson said.

"I am taking nothing away," Zelenka commented, "with exception of your puddle jumper hyperdrive, which they had shelved anyway, the notebooks, which are easily replaced, and nahquadah generator, which they will hardly miss. The rest is only copied data."

"And you," Rodney pointed out.

"Well," said Zelenka philosophically, "they were hardly using me to my best capacity. When all the smoke clears they will find that I have sent a letter of resignation." A small chime sounded from the jumper's control panel just then, and Zelenka turned to check a display. "Ah," he announced with a smile. "Our ride is here. We will need to move swiftly to transfer all of this cargo from here to their jumper."

"And we can't just fly this jumper up to the Travelers' ship because...?" Rodney asked.

"Because alterations I made to this jumper in order to sabotage city power systems has rendered it incapable of achieving orbit," Zelenka answered. "There will be no escaping this small amount of manual labor for you McKay, I am sorry to say."

Rodney rolled his eyes, but then stood to pick up a large crate and head out the door, through which he could now see a second jumper de-cloaking next to them on the pier. Zelenka followed with his own load, and then Carson. Carson was younger and stronger and made three trips loaded with gear while Rodney and Zelenka made two each. They finished and closed up the rear hatch just as a squad of soldiers -probably more of Bryant's SEALs- appeared on the pier, headed in their direction. It was too late for them, however, for the jumper with the three escapees and their hold full of ill-gotten gains was already lifting off, and seconds later Rodney heard the sound of the cloak engaging.

"One last detail," Zelenka said, holding up a small device that Rodney recognized as a detonator. "An end to twenty years of lies and secrets." He pressed the button and Rodney heard the soft thud of an explosion from just beneath them. "I have no desire for them to learn how I achieved what I did," Zelenka explained as their jumper banked and Rodney could see through the front window the plume of smoke rising from the deck where the other jumper had been parked.

They'd done it, Rodney thought with a sense of slowly dawning shock. They'd gotten away, from Bryant and her goons, from the fear, the lies, and the humiliation -from all of it. And Rodney had a feeling they were never coming back.

~*~


	8. Stars Will Fall...

**Předtím**

"So what ever happened to that mimeograph machine of yours, Radek?" Rodney asked as they settled in for the night in their new beds. The only illumination in the room at the moment was the dim glow of three 'standby' lights on the three laptops scattered about the room, and so Rodney's voice came as a sudden intrusion into the dark, but they'd none of them been asleep.

"Well, it had pretty much given its all in the days before the Revolution," Radek answered. "But what was most wonderful was that immediately after, it was no longer needed. All the restrictions on the press had been lifted, and so newspapers and radio stations could say all that needed to be said, and bookstores could sell anything they wished. Our goal all along had been to make samizdat unnecessary, and we had succeeded."

"Aye, that's a wonderful thing," Carson said softly.

"So we had rendered our beloved cyklostyl obsolete," Radek said with a smile, "but we all thought that it should be given some honor, so we took it back to the Olšanské Cemetery."

"Why not?" Rodney's voice sounded amused, but also pleased.

"We had quite a gathering," Radek reminisced. "My family came, with all my uncles, including the one who had just been released from jail, and many of my university friends, especially the ones who had helped me run the thing. Even Jakub, the one who shared his lab where he made the pervitin, he came... and I think he actually cried."

Radek heard Rodney snort in the dark at this.

"We were all very full of feeling in those days," Radek explained. "My uncle cried too, though, having just been released from prison, a lot of things made him cry." In truth, his uncle had never been the same after that, and he never spoke of his time in prison. His mother and his aunts had simply stepped in to care for him, and never asked him anything.

"It was a grand gathering we had," Radek continued. "We placed the cyklostyl back in the crypt with my great uncle's ashes, only this time we bricked it in, so that it would not become a home for cats again, and we all said words and left candles and flowers. When I still lived in Prague I used to visit that crypt and place a candle there every year on the anniversary of the revolution. It was a good thing to remember."

"Aye, and your part in it was not so small," Carson commented.

"We had a part, yes," Radek acknowledged, "but others had far greater, and suffered far more."

"Still," said Rodney, "what your country did did... even I am impressed. Really. I mean, you threw out a fifty year old regime without a shot being fired. That's definitely one for the history books."

"It did seem... almost miraculous at the time, even to us," Radek replied. "Though the work of creating a nation is far more difficult, it turns out, than throwing out an oppressive regime. Much was done badly in the first weeks and months, and even years of our new nation, and even if we had done everything perfectly, we had so much to recover... so much damage to undo. Even nearly fifty years after revolution, I know my country still struggles with corruption... still labors to undo environmental damage caused by soviet practices. The revolution never ends, my friends, for the day that it does -that is the day that it is lost."

The room fell quiet for a moment then, so quiet that when one of the notebooks' cooling fans came on in the dark, it seemed almost loud.

"Aye," Carson said eventually. "Ye said a mouthful there, luv."

"Yeah," said Rodney a few moments later. "No kidding."

Radek didn't think that anyone fell asleep after that -he certainly didn't- but they were content with silence anyhow, and eventually sleep did take them all.

 

~*~

_**Stars Will Fall For Love To Rise** _

_**...Reason Enough** _

"Definitely a good idea to tidy up after yourself, following an operation like that," said an *almost* familiar voice from the pilot's seat. "Oh, and welcome aboard, docs," he continued. "Sorry I didn't say anything earlier, but I figured it was best to stay focused on getting down and getting up again."

Rodney's heart almost stopped dead as he made his way forward to get a look at the speaker, and got a glimpse of a shock of unruly black hair and distinctive angular ears from behind the pilot's seat. Then the man turned, and Rodney could see that while the chin and cheekbones were right, the lips were too thin, the nose not quite so sharp, and the eyes that blinked up in welcome as he turned back to greet them, were a misty gray blue, and not John Sheppard's dark, almost green colored eyes at all.

"Who the hell...?" Rodney began, sitting heavily in the nearest seat.

"Mom always said I looked a lot like my dad," the man said. "Guess she was right."

"And your father was really...?" Carson said, slipping into the seat across from Rodney's, behind the pilot.

"John Sheppard, yeah," the pilot answered. "And Larrin was my mom. My name's Rynjon, by the way, and I'm pleased to meet you all at last, especially you, Dr Zelenka. This load of stuff you've brought is going to make a big difference to all our people, and we're all really grateful."

"Well, I am very grateful to be rescued from Atlantis," Zelenka said, moving up to sit in the other front seat, "and that you agreed to make a home for the three of us."

"Wait..." Rodney's head was spinning. Suddenly there was so very much to take in. "When did Sheppard and Larrin...?"

"He never knew," Rynjon answered without looking back, apparently still focused on his flying. "My people have become, for obvious reasons, rather adept at extracting... genetic material from subjects who are badly injured or unconscious. Sheppard's genetic assets were too valuable for my mother to pass them up, when she had the opportunity. She did mean to tell him though. She said she was just going to tell him when he, ah, disappeared."

"We all knew your father very well," Zelenka said kindly. "Though I do not think that anyone knew him better than Dr McKay." Zelenka gestured to direct Rynjon's attention to Rodney, who was still trying to decide whether to consider this young man as newly discovered family, or regard him with suspicion, as he had Larrin. Certainly, the man had had no say in the manner of his conception, but Larrin had likely raised him as well, to her own highly dubious standards of morality.

"And where, pray tell, is your mother?" Rodney asked, not really ready to let go of the impulse toward suspicion until he knew a lot more of the facts.

"We lost her, about six weeks ago, actually," Rynjon said, his voice betraying no particular emotion, but suddenly much flatter than it had been previously. "She was covering a salvage mission on one of the worlds that Michael's virus had depopulated when some of his forces showed up. She stayed behind and made sure everyone else got away... but she didn't."

"I am very sorry for your loss," Zelenka said softly after a moment. "She made all this, my freedom -our freedom, possible."

Rodney could see Rynjon shrug -a painfully familiar gesture. "She died the way she would have wanted, fighting for her people, saving lives," he said. "Travelers don't get to die in bed, as a rule, and they don't often make it past sixty, either, so she did pretty good. She'll be remembered."

A reflective silence fell over the jumper for a bit after that, and Rodney, for his own part, found himself reflecting that Larrin's morals might be dubious from his, Earth born, point of view, but probably made perfect sense in her own world, and when push came to shove, it was probably better to have someone like her in his corner than not. After all, it was apparently she who had struck this deal with Zelenka originally, and that meant that he had her to thank for his freedom as well.

Of course, the manner in which he had attained this freedom meant that Rodney McKay had burned yet another bridge. He would likely never be welcomed back to Earth again, and that notion was going to take some time to wrap his head around. They were all exiles now, and would probably never see Earth again, for all that they were free. Still, he was not alone. If he had any friends left in all the universe, it was the two men sharing this jumper with him now, and that might just make it all bearable.

"Rynjon," Carson ventured into the silence, "may I presume that you've inherited your father's ATA gene?"

"Sure have," said their pilot with a grin. "Makes me a pretty busy guy most days, and I've already got five kids out there, scattered through the fleet. Oldest one's just turned six."

"Wait... five kids?" Rodney asked, frowning. "Don't the Travelers have to keep their population in check a bit better than that?"

"Usually, yes," Rynjon said, and Rodney wondered how a drawl could be genetically inherited. "But I'm something of a special case. The conclave of Captains has authorized me to father ten children -one for each ship in the fleet."

"I, ah, I don't know if Radek told you about this," Carson said, "but I had developed a gene therapy treatment that caused the ATA gene to be expressed in about sixty percent of Earth born humans. I don't know how long it would take me to recreate the technique..."

"No time at all," Zelenka said with a smile. "All of your ATA research is included in the data I brought with us, as well as all of your other notes and research. I could not offer your services, as you were not available to consent when I was making negotiations, but this data was specifically included in our deal, at Larrin's request."

"Of course, I'm happy to offer my services," Carson said immediately, "for any medical needs your people might have that I could help with. As you'll be giving me a home for the rest of my life, it's the least I can do. And of course I'll make the ATA gene therapy available for any of the Travelers who would like it as well. I've no guarantee it would work on your people as it has on mine, but if it doesn't then I can surely adapt it so that it does."

"That's really great to hear, doc," said Rynjon. "And if it works you'll be the biggest hero in Traveler history, no kidding."

"Ye've no need to make a hero of me, lad," Carson said, blushing a little. "It's just not in me to sit about useless, if ye know what I mean."

"Um," Rodney found himself speaking before he realized it, "I, ah... I know that Dr Zelenka agreed to put himself at your disposal as part of this, ah, deal, but if there's anything you can use my help with... and that's probably quite a few things given the age of your fleet and the level of, um, no offence... 'training'... your engineers have... Anyway... what I mean to say is, all you have to do is ask, right? Anything you need."

Zelenka laughed, and Rodney saw years fall away from his face as he did.

"This," he said with a grin, "this is the Rodney McKay we have all missed. It is good to have you back, my friend."

"I, ah, think I've kind of missed me too," Rodney said, trying on a smile like he'd lost the habit of it and was trying to get it back.

"If what my mother said about you is even half true, then I figure we'll consider ourselves damned lucky to have you, too, McKay," Rynjon said. "And it's a bit of a surprise as well. Zelenka didn't say a thing about your coming along till he called three days ago."

"So what did your mother say about me?" Rodney asked predictably.

"That you were the biggest son-of-a-bitch in two galaxies," Rynjon said with a grin, "and every bit as smart as you say you are."

"Aye, that's all true," Carson commented, his eyes twinkling.

"Indeed," Radek concurred. "I never knew that Larrin was such an astute judge of character."

"Actually," Rynjon said, "that's what she said Sheppard told her. She only met him once."

"Aye, well, Sheppard knew Rodney pretty well too," said Carson.

"You know, if what Radek and I installed in Atlantis works," Rodney injected, "then there's a reality where you'll be able to meet the guy yourself, and me too... though I sure wish I could see the look on Sheppard's face when he realizes that he has a kid."

"Okay, I'm really gonna want to have you explain what you just said to me at some point," Rynjon said, "but we're here now, so it'll have to wait for later."

The one-time Ancient warship, currently serving as a home for several hundred Travelers, had come to loom in their front window as they spoke, and now the jumper bay was coming into view. This is home now, Rodney thought to himself, and wondered if it would ever seem to feel like a home to him, the way Atlantis had.

 

There was a welcoming committee of a couple senior officers from the ship, who's name was The Arriden Nebula, and a number of technicians, some of them seeming very young to Rodney, waiting in the bay when they landed. Introductions were made, which Rodney promptly forgot, and then the officers ordered the technicians to off-load the jumper's contents and store them carefully. They were also ordered not to touch any of it until Zelenka had briefed them on it.

They were taken to their new quarters next, to drop off their personal luggage (Radek had thoughtfully packed duffels with clothes and personal effects -one each for Rodney and Carson), then to the mess hall for an uninspired but altogether nourishing lunch. After that Rynjon was called away on other duties and the Arriden Nebula's Second Officer, a woman named Raekel, gave them a cursory tour of the ship, at the conclusion of which both Rodney and Zelenka claimed fatigue, and so she accompanied them back to their quarters.

"You're all free to go anywhere you like on the Nebula," she said, "and if you want to know anything, or need any help, just give a call and someone will be happy to help you out. I can't tell you how excited we are that you've all said that you're happy to help us out, and we're really looking forward to it, but we figured we'd give you a couple of days to settle in and get used to life here before we put you to work. And here you are..."

They stood before one of many undistinguished doors in a long hallway of crew quarters, each of them thinking, Rodney suspected, that they would come to recognize this door by its proximity and placement soon enough. Only the captain rated single occupant quarters on a Travelers' ship, and if he or she had a partner or family, then they lived just as close as everyone else. The three of them would share these quarters then, though they'd been told that one or all of them might be away, doing jobs on other ships from time to time.

Entering with his two companions, Rodney took in the room once again: the pale gray carpet and functional chairs, the three beds set against three adjacent walls at the far end of the room, the door leading to a small but efficient bathroom. This was home now. They'd find some way to personalize it soon enough, probably, at first, by bringing in random detritus from whatever they were working on and scattering it about the place. They all three of them did that, and Rodney didn't think anyone would mind, as long as it didn't get out of hand.

In their earlier visit, they'd dropped their personal possessions, a single duffel and a computer bag each, almost randomly on the three beds and they each wandered that direction now, exchanging slightly awkward glances. It was Carson who finally dared to broach the question.

"Does anyone have any particular preference as to which bed they sleep on?" he asked, "or shall we just leave things as they are?"

"I suppose I can assume that all three of them would be equally ruinous to my back," Rodney said, sitting on what was now apparently his bed. "So I guess I don't really care."

"Radek?" Carson asked the scientist who had come to sit rather heavily on his bed, gazing about with an almost shell-shocked expression. "Have you any objections to the bed you've got?"

"No..." Zelenka shook his head dazedly. "This is... we are really here... This is where we live now... My god..." Slowly, he removed his glasses and set them on the small bedside table and lowered his face into his hands, as though in fatigue, but a few moments later Rodney realized that his shoulders were shaking. Carson noticed too.

"Radek? Luv?" He stood and approached cautiously. "Are ye all right?"

Radek didn't answer at first, and when he did his words were muffled by his hands, though Rodney could make out enough to understand, and they made his heart ache.

"Ježiši Marja... what have I done? What have I done?"

Carson was at his side in a flash, and even Rodney found himself moving from his own bed to sit at Radek's other side, placing a tentative hand on his shoulder.

"There now luv," Carson said gently, placing his arm around Radek's trembling shoulders, "Ye've done nothing to be ashamed of... nothing at all..."

"I... I've betrayed my own people," Radek said, lifting his head to reveal his tear streaked face. "My own world... my own galaxy, for god's sake... And I can never go back... none of us can... We'll never see Earth again."

Rodney shrugged. "Well, as you know," he said, "I hadn't exactly planned on ever going back as it was, and even if you could call what you did a betrayal... hell, they betrayed you first, big time... and that more than justifies anything you've done in my book."

"Do you... do you really think so, Rodney?" Radek asked, his voice just a little steadier.

"I've no doubts of it," Carson confirmed. "And Radek, luv, don't ever forget that you've saved both our lives, and paid something of a price to do it. I won't ever forget that, as long as I live."

"Me neither," said Rodney, "and hey, here's another great thing, I don't have to act all nice and meek any more, and you can finally quit having to pretend to be a bastard."

"No more lies..." said Radek, as though he was seeing his first sunrise in decades.

"Aye, luv," said Carson smiling. "You're all done with that now."

"I can be a good man again," Radek said, his voice breaking a bit once more, but this time with joy.

"Hey," said Rodney. "You were always a good man, and don't ever let anyone tell you otherwise."

It felt a little strange to Rodney, to have Radek Zelenka turn and throw his arms around him, stranger still to feel his own arms respond in kind, and strangest of all that when Carson leaned in to wrap both of them in an even larger embrace Rodney didn't feel uncomfortable at all. Instead, all he thought was, this is home. I am really home now.

~*~


	9. Epilogue

**Epilogue**

The Arriden Nebula did come to really feel like home soon enough, and they found themselves useful and welcome among the Travelers in no time. Keeping busy turned out, unsurprisingly, to be the best therapy against homesickness, and the way things worked out, none of them had much cause to think of Earth very often. Living on board a ship meant that they experienced no seasonal variations, and so traditional Earth holidays, significant anniversaries and even birthdays came and went without being noted or missed in the least.

They could not help occasionally reminiscing about Earth, especially when the three of them were alone together, and that was how they each knew that none of them ever really forgot Earth, or that they were exiles. It was a grain of sorrow that each one of them carried, best not talked about most days, and in time the grain became layered with precious memories, like a pearl. They recognized it in each other, the presence of that pearl of sorrow and longing, and towards the end they none of them ever needed to speak of it, for it would be visible in a suddenly distant gaze, in the whisper of a sigh, in the odd wry and bitter smile... to one who knew what to look for.

The Travelers honored that thing which the three men shared that no Traveler could, and honored the three of them for that, almost more than they did for the remarkable contributions that they each made to the Traveler's civilization, though these were hardly insignificant.

Carson's success at endowing over half the Traveler population with the ATA gene made him one of the most significant figures in Traveler history, though Rodney and Radek made a place for themselves in Traveler history too.

It was said of them, in the end, that there was nowhere they would not go to fix a Traveler ship or get hold of some new technology, even as they grew older. For eighteen years the two of them worked together to essentially rebuild the entire Traveler fleet, and train up a generation of the best engineers and technicians the Travelers had ever had. They even met their ends, together, in the true Traveler fashion.

They had gone down to one of Michael's abandoned bases with a party of trainees to loot it and destroy what was left, when one of his patrol ships showed up. Rodney and Radek had sent the trainees back to the ship and, from the planet, created the diversion needed to allow the Traveler ship to escape. Then, when Michael's ship had landed to investigate, they'd blown it all up.

Carson had been beside himself with grief when he'd heard the news, but he'd had children by then, and they were a considerable comfort to him. By that time Carson had also come to adopt some of what Rodney had continued to think of of as the Traveler's 'dubious' moral standards, and so it was an additional comfort to him that, only a few months after their passing, Rodney and Radek also had children growing up amongst the Travelers. Rynjon's eldest daughter happily bore them both.

Dr Carson Beckett lived, among the Travelers, to the ripe old age of 87 and worked all but the last few days of that life. He died, in defiance of Traveler tendencies, in his bed, surrounded by children and grandchildren, and at peace.

**~Konec~**

 

This story is dedicated to my students, especially the ones who have been willing to share their experiences of the Velvet Revolution and the time before it, with me. It is also dedicated to the countless men and women, young and old, who gathered, nearly twenty years ago, in the central squares and plazas of every city in what was then Czechoslovakia, to stand and shake their keys in defiance of their government. I stand in awe of their achievement every day that I am here.

It is also dedicated to the magnificent but rapidly disappearing mimeograph machine, a fixture of all public schools when I was growing up. My high school science fiction club did indeed use one to publish our own fanzine, called Tesseract, and we did, in fact, steal four reams of paper from the student government in order to print issue number four, and no one ever caught us.

T.D.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reason Enough (All The King’s Men)
> 
> All The King’s Men Stand Still In A Thunder Storm  
> Diamonds Of Rain On The Skin Of The Battle Worn  
> Eyes Touching Eyes In The Sight Of Their Long Range Guns
> 
> The Bough That Breaks, The Cradle Falls  
> Could This Be Reason Enough  
> The Beast That Down To Eden Crawls  
> Reason Enough
> 
> Staring Into The Depths Of The Darkest Dream  
> Hurling Your Stones In The Eye Of The War Machine  
> Howling Like Wolves To The Moon For The Sons Of Our Daughters
> 
> Hush Little Baby, Dry Your Eyes  
> Claro Que Sì, Reason Enough  
> Stars Will Fall For Love To Rise  
> Reason Enough
> 
> Little Drops Of Water  
> Little Grains Of Sand  
> Make The Mighty Ocean  
> And The Pleasant Land
> 
> ***
> 
> Lady Bug, Lady Bug – Fly Away Home  
> Your House Is On Fire – Your Children Are Gone  
> All The King’s Horses, And All The King’s Men  
> Couldn’t Put Humpty Together Again
> 
> She Went To The Cupboard,  
> The Cupboard Was Bare
> 
> Eight Little Indians Never Heard Of Heaven  
> One Went To Sleep, And Then There Where Seven
> 
> Ashes, Ashes, We All Fall Down
> 
> Hark, Hark, The Dogs Do Bark  
> the Beggars Are Coming To Town
> 
> And If The Great Man Cut Down The Great Tree  
> What A Splish-Splash That Would Be
> 
> ~Andreas Vollenweider

**Author's Note:**

> This is possibly the best thing I've ever written.
> 
> It was, for the most part, finished over a year ago, but as it delves deeply into recent Czech and Czechoslovak history, I felt obliged to have it vetted by local sources. This took a little time, but it was well worth it. Too often, people, including writers for the show, have written irresponsible and inaccurate things about life in this country under the communists (for instance, Radek's family would never have had to spend the winter in a tent -the government could not have it seen that anyone in their workers' paradise did not have a roof over their heads) and I was determined not to make such mistakes. As is often the case, the true nature of life here in those times was far more complex, and actually makes a much better story. I hope you find this true yourselves.
> 
> The title and the chapter headings in this story come from the Andreas Vollenweider song of the same name. Those lyrics are, in turn (as most of you will have no doubt noted) mostly lifted from a random assortment of nursery rhymes. In the song, they are juxtaposed in such a way as to deliver a mysteriously moving effect, though I cannot quite explain why. I recommend giving it a listen.


End file.
